Dear Parents/Guardians, Your Kids Aren't Kids Anymore
Gone are the days when a child would lazily sit on the grass or idly swing on the swing-set, alone with their thoughts and volatile imaginings. I know this, first hand, because I recently came across a child who was wearing a noticeable amount of cologne. I mean, I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I would venture to guess that, in my own personal deduction, he was trying to attract a member of the opposite sex, and I shudder to think why. How do I know this? Because, this child is single, I would think, and when I was single, I would try to lure a potential mate with my vapors of flora and musk, as well. I can accurately state that now, as a married man, I don't try to attract women with cologne, anymore, but rather use it as a cover-up when I've ripened and need to be washed, like spraying your homemade essential-oil spritzer in the bathroom after a torrent of the Human Condition. I really hope this kid isn't in the same circumstance.
This got me to thinking that, if this child was truly trying to attract someone in a physical sense, then he has surpassed the mentality of a child. A child, in my psyche, wants what is fun: candy, playgrounds, colors, dancing, playing, pretending, imagining, singing, screaming, etc. Someone who's putting their faith in covering their body with pheromones is looking for a much, much different kind of fun, and a child is not mature enough to deal with the consequences of that much fun.
I don't want to give the reader the impression that I think this child represents the norm. However, I will point out that he's not the first of his kind. I've come across many children who have been practicing this same ritual of spritzed offerings, possibly with a prayer for more intimate companionship. They aren't the only ones exhibiting adult-like behavior, is my point. Without using statistics I don't have or making up ones I don't care to answer for, my personal experience has been pock-marked with fluctuating instances of adult behaviors in children that my 90's-kid generation wouldn't have even dreamed of, even in our worst nightmares.
The issue is the convenience and availability of the same deviant material that's existed since humans could think past their eyes, material that was mostly only rumored to exist when I was a kid. Where we would mumble in private, ghostly-quiet tones about 'dirty magazines', kids today can easily pull up a full list of tabs containing as much pictorial or video pornography as they want from the comfort of their own laps. Where we would haphazardly convene during adult-free down times and try to impress each other with the grossest thing we've seen in movies or on TV, the modern child is bombarded from all sides of entertainment with gross, violent, and gory stylized action, sometimes even at the side of their engrossed parents. And, if we had a bad day and were inconsolably irritable, even angry, we would be quickly soothed by daytime TV or a thoughtful message from a crouching illustrated messenger of peace; but, for children of this generation, the media-driven world, both social and material, is quick to feed their anger with vengeance of all kinds, and vitriol in every conceivable effort from both adults and peers.
And, bad days aren't in short supply, of late. The current federal and local unrest in education and social programs is making it hard to keep the average child's childhood afloat. They're being reduced, daily, to performance evals and financial burdens, and that's just in government. Some will say it's because it prepares them for the business world, yet it's actually the unnecessary nature of the business world that's creating their academic climate. It's like telling someone you're going to force them to eat poison sometime in the future, for no reason, so you're giving them small but dangerous doses every day until then; you're going to suffer now because I'm going to make you suffer more, when you're older.
Your kids aren't kids anymore. They're constantly being taught they need to survive, no matter what it takes. And, to our great astonishment, their human instincts have kicked-in, and they are surviving with their natural ability to snuff-out competition, where they can. Unless everyone can chill out, and take a sniff of reality in the moment, I hope we're prepared for the world when we, ourselves, have become their greatest rivals. Old wolves don't usually survive if the pups put their own lives before loyalty.
This got me to thinking that, if this child was truly trying to attract someone in a physical sense, then he has surpassed the mentality of a child. A child, in my psyche, wants what is fun: candy, playgrounds, colors, dancing, playing, pretending, imagining, singing, screaming, etc. Someone who's putting their faith in covering their body with pheromones is looking for a much, much different kind of fun, and a child is not mature enough to deal with the consequences of that much fun.
I don't want to give the reader the impression that I think this child represents the norm. However, I will point out that he's not the first of his kind. I've come across many children who have been practicing this same ritual of spritzed offerings, possibly with a prayer for more intimate companionship. They aren't the only ones exhibiting adult-like behavior, is my point. Without using statistics I don't have or making up ones I don't care to answer for, my personal experience has been pock-marked with fluctuating instances of adult behaviors in children that my 90's-kid generation wouldn't have even dreamed of, even in our worst nightmares.
The issue is the convenience and availability of the same deviant material that's existed since humans could think past their eyes, material that was mostly only rumored to exist when I was a kid. Where we would mumble in private, ghostly-quiet tones about 'dirty magazines', kids today can easily pull up a full list of tabs containing as much pictorial or video pornography as they want from the comfort of their own laps. Where we would haphazardly convene during adult-free down times and try to impress each other with the grossest thing we've seen in movies or on TV, the modern child is bombarded from all sides of entertainment with gross, violent, and gory stylized action, sometimes even at the side of their engrossed parents. And, if we had a bad day and were inconsolably irritable, even angry, we would be quickly soothed by daytime TV or a thoughtful message from a crouching illustrated messenger of peace; but, for children of this generation, the media-driven world, both social and material, is quick to feed their anger with vengeance of all kinds, and vitriol in every conceivable effort from both adults and peers.
And, bad days aren't in short supply, of late. The current federal and local unrest in education and social programs is making it hard to keep the average child's childhood afloat. They're being reduced, daily, to performance evals and financial burdens, and that's just in government. Some will say it's because it prepares them for the business world, yet it's actually the unnecessary nature of the business world that's creating their academic climate. It's like telling someone you're going to force them to eat poison sometime in the future, for no reason, so you're giving them small but dangerous doses every day until then; you're going to suffer now because I'm going to make you suffer more, when you're older.
Your kids aren't kids anymore. They're constantly being taught they need to survive, no matter what it takes. And, to our great astonishment, their human instincts have kicked-in, and they are surviving with their natural ability to snuff-out competition, where they can. Unless everyone can chill out, and take a sniff of reality in the moment, I hope we're prepared for the world when we, ourselves, have become their greatest rivals. Old wolves don't usually survive if the pups put their own lives before loyalty.
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