Rampaging Through the House

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.