What will we call our favourite shirts?
October 1, 2007
Filed under:Jackass, Bitchin
When it happened, I’m not certain, but it happened enough to eventually be one of those things that appears on the evening news and doesn’t anger or incite enough passion in any of us to prevent it from showing up again.
While this can describe any number of things that one may possibly see on their respective local news in their respective cities and countries, I’m referring to the nationally-televised morning show that had a story about how a Kindergarten was going to ban bullying by children in Superhero clothing as they have a tendency to beat up their classmates.
I can’t even begin to find all of the things wrong with this, so I’ll simply focus on one point that I’d like to make, and then I’ll go back to my scrambled eggs and this-looks-important-to-you-so-I’ll-put-it-in-my-sloppy-mouth baby daughter.
Making someone else’s asshole kid stop punching my kid isn’t done by stopping them from pretending to be superheroes, giving them less sugar, or having them play less competitive games so they can all feel better about themselves.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point parents started making concerted efforts to stop bullies from bullying. This may sound noble enough, but it begs the question: Didn’t we ALL get bullied to some extent or another? Did our parents stop it every time?
Stopping a bully from bullying is done in only a few ways…
Either standing up for yourself or running the fuck away.
And that’s what I’ll be teaching my kids. None of this special and unique snowflake bullshit. My son talks about some kids in school and says that they pick on him, so I ask him if he knows why. If he does, I ask him if it’s worth changing who he is to keep from getting picked on. If it isn’t, then I tell him that he’s going to get used to getting smacked in the mouth for a bit, and he’ll have to settle for the knowledge that he’s the bigger and better person in the long run.
If he doesn’t know why he’s getting picked on, then I tell him to tell those kids that they’re being assholes, and that they should cease and desist if they don’t want to be widely considered as afflicted with assholitis.
You bet your ass I tell him almost exactly that too, that way he knows I’m serious. That kind of castigation threat works too, because no matter what age they are, a bully is ALWAYS concerned with everyone else’s opinion of them. If they weren’t concerned, they wouldn’t pick on others. Unless they’re pure Evil, but that’s a different concern altogether, as once you start measuring a kid’s potential in kilonazis, he’s pretty much irretrievably fucked.
If my boy gets hit, he is instructed to weigh the situation and react accordingly. “Tell a teacher” is the stalwart, but isn’t always terribly realistic and I know this. “Hit back” or “run away” are really the only two immediate options, and while getting “hit” in the first place isn’t limited to being a physical action, neither are the two possible reactions. Biting commentary has gotten me out of far more drunken bar violence than my fists ever have. So has biting for that matter.
I’m raising the kind of people that don’t attract the level of aggression it would take for me to step in and fix the situation for them. If they can’t handle it on their own, then they’re doing something stupid and not what I’ve taught them. To the best of my limited abilities, I’m teaching them not to be stupid. Those that know me know this is NOT exactly by example either.
At the risk of sounding ridiculously back-in-my-dayish, I don’t remember a whole lot of protection for the victim when I was a kid. Sadly enough, I don’t even really remember when all this horseshit about stopping bullies got started either.
I’m thinking that I was probably part of the last generation to ever get beaned in the face during dodgeball, get a Nuclear Wedgie, a Swirly, and stuffed in a locker. It’s almost as if all of people in my generation that grew up and became teachers and legislators and lawyers, as well as Parents, decided that they hated that shit and it ruined their life (or at least that’s what their $250 an hour shrink told ‘em) and they were going to put a stop to it.
Did I want it stopped? At the time, you bet your ass. But I couldn’t stop it, and my parents wouldn’t, so I put up with it. I got busted in the mouth and I took it, and I grew and I learned and I toughened the fuck up.
It can be packaged to look like I was simply biding my time until I was able to mete out similar punishment in a misguided attempt to garner some payback, but I was different. I still wanted the opportunity, absolutely, but I wanted to be the one that chose not to actually go through with the “crippling” part of the Nipple Crippler. I wanted to show how much better I was than those meaty-craniumed smarmy-faced hormonkeys. I wanted my chance to show my benevolence, and in doing so prove myself better than the fuckwits before me. I wanted my chance to make the World a better place.
And I didn’t get one. I missed my chance to be as rotten or merciful as I wanted. The choice for me to be either was taken away by Soccerbitches who think that hiding little MackenzieDakotaMontana under a mound of Xbox games, Coke and Oreos is the answer to keep the other kids from calling her “fatty fatty two by four who can’t fit through the kitchen door”.
The rules changed and someone decided to fight back a little too late, via the wrong adolescent.
Nerdly McGeekington comes to Principal PretendsToCare absolutely livid because little Twigtastic WheresMyPuffer got his glasses broken when Tuffy O’ShitForParents drilled him in the kisser during the Weed Out the Pussies Round of the Dodgeball Tournament, and the possible solutions to this are:
A) Ban yet another activity that *gasp* separates the physically strong and able from the rest, thereby reducing the risk that kids can hurt each others feelers.
B) Encourage Twiggy to put his only real weapon to work and hatch a fiendishly intelligent plot of humiliating and public revenge while taping his glasses back together.
C) Make ‘em all wear little pink tutus, only go all Harrison Bergeron on ‘em and make some of the tutus pinker and more gay the tougher the kid is.
I think it’s pretty evident which selection I endorse, and I truly believe it’s made the World a better place.
Without the ritualistic beating of a nerd, we wouldn’t have Microsoft (whose societal value is still in question but I enjoy nonetheless), Teh Intraweb (and all that pr0n), PC Loadletter (best battle cry for smashing electronic equipment EVER), Doom, Madden ’96, Toy Story and Shrek, Transformers, microscopic girl’s dorm cams, and phones that are so fucking futurtastic that they not only play the latest music, highlights from the footy, take frameable pictures and screenable videos, but can tell us when we need to drop a deuce.
We really should thank the nerds more. Go on, go hug a nerd right now.
And by “hug” I mean, “grasp and pull the elastic waistband of their undergarments with such force as to cause discomfort and pain to their genitalia and/or rectum”.
What’s that? What about the bullies? Well the World needs them too. Bullies are the foundation of the White Trash segment of our society as well as some of our best law enforcers, lawmakers, and legislators.
Without good and proper assholes doling out youthful undergarment punishment, we wouldn’t be able to sue for millions of dollars after burning our genitalia with boiling refreshments, we’d pay thousands more per gallon of fuel, we wouldn’t have a venue in which to drink pisswaterbeer and scream ourselves hoarse at gladiatoresque sweatdemons, and what would we call our favourite all-rounder in upper body clothing? White singlets? Thin white tanktops? Sleeveless undershirts?
No. It’s a wifebeater, and everybody knows that.
If that first bully, wearing one of those multipurpose masterpieces, didn’t loudly and proudly proclaim his household dominance with his drunken fists, we’d have no clever name for them. And then, dare I say it, they might not even be as equally popular with Rock Stars, skateboarding punks and lesbians.
So, raise your kids up right. If you were a pussy, then coddle and swaddle and grow yourself some quality dominance-establishing fodder. Who else is to teach us how to passive-aggressively change the World while making billions?
If you were an asshole, then by all rights raise yet another asshole. It’s not like anyone could ever envision a world without them, and besides, whatever would become of the Wars over Oil and Pro Wrestling?
While my kids aren’t going to sit in a field and toke their way to self-enlightenment while centering their shakras or shakraing their centers, they certainly aren’t going to step on anybody’s fucking face to further their own worthless asses either.
They’re going to get where they’re at in Life, to that wonderful place I’m in with all of the wonderful things in it, the same way that I did…
Blind Luck.
Go get ‘em Tiger!
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