Have you ever had a child visit your home that you realized was sooner or later going to break something? Maybe it was the child of a relative or a friend that you invited for a nice afternoon visit, and lo and behold, you’ve acquired this additional short human, apparently part of the visit package. You assure your adult guests that you are fine with this little rambunctious person running in and out of the house, slamming the door each time. In truth, you have employed an extra set of ears to listen for the kid's movements in the house. Where is he now? Upstairs? Downstairs? Attic? Basement? He explores throughout your home, going places where guests don’t usually wander. “Getting into things,” is what my mother used to call it. “Keep an eye on ___; he gets into everything.”
He’s energetic. Gratuitously loud. Full of himself. He tries out everything he
gets his hands on. A music box saved from childhood, a model airplane on a
shelf. Never mind that it is an exact replica of the one that your father flew
in WWII. He plays with things that you have set out as remembrances of special
trips. A beautiful box of seashells from a trip to the Coast becomes a crumbled
pile on the floor. He throws a few to see how far they can fly. Picks up a
glass figurine that was a gift from a special person in your life and carries
it around to looks at it from every angle, shakes it to see if the bubble
inside will move.
The little person is the kind that
pounds on the piano keys as he trots by, then runs off to find something else
that makes noise. When he gets quiet you can be sure that he is busy doing
something he should not. You excuse yourself to go “to the bathroom” because
your sixth sense is in the red zone. He
is up to something, but what? You might feel embarrassed later, by your own
behavior because you tried to sneak up on him to catch him in the act. You feared that if you didn’t, it could be
weeks or even months before you discover what in the heck he was doing up there
in that drawer or closet. You question whether you should serve the rich
chocolate brownies you had planned for a snack. The kid will snatch two of them,
run off and then bounce off the walls on a sugar high. Not to mention that
there will be chocolate fingerprints in unlikely places after your guests
leave.
Now, this is not a commentary on children
with hyperactivity disorder. No, this is in fact, a commentary about trusting untrustworthy
people to go rampaging willy-nilly through your house. How many of us are okay with this kid
spelunking through the home unsupervised? Are you really?
Now, in our larger House, the House
that all of us Americans share, we have a lot of stuff that needs caretaking. Stuff
like land and water and air. Stuff like people that are extremely vulnerable
because of disability or illness or old age, because of poverty or poor
education, hatred or the stupidity of others. “Stupid is as stupid does,” per
Forrest Gump. There’s been a strong
uptick in stupid the last few years, in my opinion. And nastiness. And vindictiveness. And lying. Stealing, too. Stealing of children is the hardest pill to
swallow. Sneaking around to get away with stuff in the House by being quiet
about it so maybe nobody will notice the destruction of valuable assets. These
are all things I would never allow my children or my guests to get away with in
my house. Nor would I allow rambunctious
people to run around making a lot of noise with guns that are made for hurting
me in my own house. Neither will I accept untrustworthy people that are full of
themselves demanding a bigger piece of the afternoon snack than anybody else will
get. No, I don’t want that kind of behavior in my house.
In our large House, we Americans have
relationships with our friends and neighbors outside of our House. People that
we invite to visit because we like them and they like us. We have common goals
and ideals. We do not want friends who
sneak around in our House and break things, make messes, and then run away. And
neither should we do that in their Houses. Friends are to be respected. We need
them. We depend upon them. Some of them we have helped to feed. And some we’ve
protected. Admittedly, it’s often
puzzling to me how we pick and choose those we help to protect. But when we
turn aside from people who have fought alongside us, people who have had our
backs in the gravest of situations? There is no honor in that. No true
friendship can be bought or sold or traded for something else that was worth
more than that relationship. Behaving in such a way makes a john of America, on
the hunt for a prostitute that can be used and discarded. To hell with respect.
To hell with honor and trust. Our House
cannot allow just any overgrown, gratuitously loud, rambunctious Kid to play in
our House and break things we value.
Keep an eye on Stupid; he’s messing with things he knows nothing about, breaking things, and getting people killed. Put him out of the House. Untrustworthy people cannot be allowed to rampage through our House.
Well SAid, well pictORiAliZed, Ardys. House needs to be flipped...remodeled, made safe ..
ReplyDeleteI've had quite enough of Stupid chipping away at the stone foundation.
ReplyDelete