IT'S NOT EASY TO BE A KID


I DON’T WANT TO BE A YOUNGSTER ANYMORE
by
Lynn Ruth Miller


We worry about what a child will become tomorrow,
yet we forget that he is someone today.
Stacia Tauscher
American children are parental badges of achievement. Proud parents put bumper stickers on their cars saying MY KID IS AN HONOR STUDENT. This doesn’t say much for the parent does it? In my day, a kid was a goat.
Children in America control their parents. If mother says a harsh word, the child can report her to the police. It seems a bit extreme to me to put mom in jail just to get an extra helping of chocolate cake.
Parents are learning to fight back. If a child gets out of hand, they just open the gun cabinet and let him play.
American children never walk home from school. They take the bus. This explains why 97% of school bus drivers are psychopaths and none of them are paedophiles. They know what children are really like. They prefer prostitutes. At least you get what you pay for.
If the bus driver wants to shut the children up he slams on his brakes. That will toss them all into the aisle. Then he can just toss them out at their stop.
The only catch is that American children are obese. That is why all school bus drivers are into heavy metal. If you can muzzle a 500 pound child, you are assured a peaceful day on the job.
If a bus driver wants to avoid trouble, he should give every child candy laced with Valium …and save some for himself.
Whenever I see a child on a leash, I always wonder if the mother remembered the plastic bag.
I hear there is a campaign in Britain to get the kids away from their computer games to play outdoors. We have solved that in America. We don’t have an outdoors. We just have shopping malls.
Every American parent thinks his child is a potential movie star. I think it is a devious way to get junior out of the house. Put him in the movies and someone else can get him away from the computer.
My friend Billy has a son he is grooming for stand-up comedy. “He is an amazing talent,” he said. “He can only say one word, but his timing is amazing.” He has auditioned the boy for American’s Got Talent and Billy insists his son stole the show. “He bit Peers Morgan,” he said. “And he didn’t get indigestion.”
American children spend approximately 98% of their waking hours in front of a television screen and they think what they awe on that screen is reality. Not long ago, an eight year old grabbed the family gun (everyone who is anyone has one) and shot member of his third grade class. He had a huge smile on his face. He had no idea that bullets kill and he had no concept of what killing really means. After all, the guy that gets shot on TV always reappears the next week, doesn’t he?
Protecting our children from harm has become a universal nightmare. The real victims are the parents who spend 50% of their time chauffeuring their children from one supervised activity to another. I wonder if that is the real meaning of “no child left behind.”
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is an educational program in the states that fires teachers if their students don’t meet a national minimum score on a standardized test.
And speaking of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND program, I think it is time to accept that some people are stupid. For example, the idiots who thought of that idea. For my part, I wouldn’t mind being left behind. It would give me time to actually learn something.


Kids: they dance before they learm
there is anything that isn’t music.
William Stafford