Go Home Already: Shouts and Murmurs
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Parenting is not an easy job. Educating kids, teaching them right from wrong, not spoiling them but treating them well, giving them life lessons. Kids can be terrors, and they can be annoying, and they can be sweet. But why does it always seem like the most unusual parenting happens in the grocery store?
Quote of the Week
Giant Food in Columbia Heights around noon last Friday:
Mom pushing two kids, one of whom was clearly school age.
Girl points to cereal box featuring children's book character Arthur the Aardvark.
Girl: "Look Mom, it's Arthur, I love Arthur. I get to read about him in Sunday School."
Mom: "No shit Sherlock, you think I don't know who Arthur is? Bitch. I know who Arthur is. Fuck... Sunday School! Arthur? Bitch."
A church lady witnessing this scene looked woozy after hearing that and ran to catch up with the family.
After the jump, weapons at the Armory, Jar Jar Binks, and the wrong work.
Don't forget to keep your ears open and send the good stuff to us at overheardindc (at) gmail (dot) com
Photo by SweetJen34
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It is the Armory, after all.
While waiting in the long line outside the DC Armory on Saturday for the DC Roller Girls event:
Man in green-hooded sweatshirt: "Dude, I made it all the way up to the front and then they wouldn't let me in... just because I had a fucking knife. Sucks!"
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What's the Dewey Decimal number for mixology?
About a week ago at a DC Public Library:
A lady who is quickly approaching 50 has just spent the past 30 minutes on the phone, talking about nothing work-related, ending her conversation reciting her dc dot gov email address.
She hangs up the phone and belches. "I need a dot drink!"
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Oopsie
During a meeting at the Pentagon:
An officer is giving a presentation talking about how he spent 4 months working on this project, and shows a very complicated spreadsheet and simulation. At the very end of the briefing, there is a long pause.
Big boss to presenter's boss: "Did someone ask for this work to be done?"
(Long silence in the room)
Presenter's boss: "No."
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It's right near stick it up your ass
At 10th & W St NW, 7:30am on Monday:
Woman: "I'm not from Southeast."
Man: "You are now."
Woman: "I'm not from any neighborhood. I'm from my mother's womb."
Man: "What part of town is that?"
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At least he doesn't look like Jar Jar
Inside the corridor of the Pentagon:
Two officers walking, talking about someone.
Officer 1: "[someone] is getting promoted today"
Officer 2: "Was he ROTC cadre once? The name sounds familiar."
Officer 1: "Yeah he was... Do you know him?"
Officer 2: "He's a tall guy... looks like Darth Vader when Luke took off his helmet?"
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Snotty-nosed kid part II
After a performance at Sidney Harman Hall (Shakespeare Theatre) on Thursday night (Feb. 21, 2008), the eve of the expected Icepocalypse:
Teenage boy: "Some guy from, like, Wisconsin or Michigan or something is deciding whether the schools will be open."
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That's harsh.
Last Friday night at the Georgetown theater during a showing of "Vantage Point":
College aged guy saying a little too loudly: "At least Snakes on a Plane was good!"
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I, too, have noticed a lot of people with tourettes shopping at the CH Giant. They seem to congregate around the produce section screaming obscenities at the tubers.
Is the implication that Snakes on a Plane was not good?
Wait wait wait... they're now using Arthur to indoctrinate kids about things other than reading, sharing and good hygiene? For shame!
Oh man that Pentagon one reminds me of when I worked at the Rand Corporation. Boy did we have a few of those meetings...
Talk about a role model.. ugh.
What's the Dewey Decimal number for mixology?
641.874
That CH Giant one made me laugh cause it's so tragic, then get very depressed 'cause it's so tragic. Also, because as monkey said, that kind of upstanding parental behavior is not uncommon in the particular grocery store.
i know that it makes some people accuse you of being prudish for getting worked up about swearing around kids, but i swear i'd never heard people swear around children like i do here in DC.
last weekend, a lady was unloading two boys who were probably 5 and 6 out of her van in front of my house, and the words fuck, shit, bitch, and "shut the hell up, idiot" were just flying.
how the heck are we going to get even marginally well-adjusted kids in this city when their parents are just louts?
quick someone call child services...oh wait, they won't do anything.
If she has just smacked them they would have gotten the message a lot quicker.
IMGoph: As your post illustrates, it's not so much the swearing that's problematic (though it doesn't do much in the way of building vocabulary), but rather how frequently it's used by parents or other caretakers to denigrate children -- "shut the hell up" is a prime example, and I've heard things like "you little shit" too many times to count.
it must be generational. parents and kids these days are talking nasty to each other these days. even on tv -- i watched the episode of In Treatment where the girl who tried to kill herself went to therapy with her mom. They were both pretty evil.
Every Black comedian has an ass-whipping routine. Eddie Murphy's Delirious concert film had the shoe-throwing mother's routine. Richard Pryor had the get-a-switch-to-beat-your-own-ass routine ("And you best not come back with no tiny switch, otherwise he'd get the whole goddamned tree and beat your ass.") Black men of a certain age who actually had a father in the house can all share tales of when they got their asses tored up. Unfortunately, when such a father figure is absent, it's up to mom to deliver justice that is swift and retribution that is final. Sometimes it has to happen in the canned vegetable aisle. More's the pity.
There's a big difference between threats with cursing ("I'll beat your ass") and cursing at a child ("No shit, sherlock... bitch"). With the former you can grow up into a (mostly) well-adjusted person with colorful stories to tell about your parents. With the latter... I can't imagine what it's like to have a parent/parents who demean and insult you.
There is absolutely a difference to children getting a spanking for not behaving and parents constantly verbally disrespecting their children. I hear more and more ghetto-a$$ mothers curse at their kids, smack them because they (the mothers) are annoyed with the kids and are in a bad mood.
While I abhor the sight & sound of parents verbally berating their kids in public, it's difficult for me to pass judgment on them. It is not the decision I would make in that situation, but I had the benefit of being raised in a home with two loving parents (who definitely whipped my ass, but never in public) and a half-decent education to go along with that. Who knows what I would do if I hadn't had a Father who taught that as important as it is for a man to be strong and tough, it's just as important (maybe more) for him to be kind and loving?
Being a parent is a tough job and rather than looking down my nose at these parents I see fucking up like this; I wish there was some way I could just go up to them and say, "Listen friend, it looks like you're out of patience right now. Why don't you let me watch after your little ones for 15 minutes while you finish your shopping?"
Re: "Listen friend, it looks like you're out of patience right now. Why don't you let me watch after your little ones for 15 minutes while you finish your shopping?"
Good joke, you'd get nothing more than resentment and your own personal barrage of invectives, maybe even something like "You want to do what? with my kids?" which may cause a few stares and perhaps a discrete call to the cops who will be waiting outside to ask you a few questions...
Good joke, you'd get nothing more than resentment and your own personal barrage of invectives, maybe even something like "You want to do what? with my kids?" which may cause a few stares and perhaps a discrete call to the cops who will be waiting outside to ask you a few questions...
No shit Sherlock, that's exactly why I would never do it. The fact remains that what a parent that is berating their kid in public most likely needs is 15 minutes to get their shit together, not a bunch of people wrinkling up their noses and talking about how "ghetto" they are on DCist.
I guess this is one area where I'm a naive idealist, but I wish that we weren't so disconnected from one and other that what I proposed didn't sound so whacked out. I suppose that's due in part to the fact that I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with other young families where we actually *do* help each other like that.