Dear Parents of the Demon Spawn of Fayettenam:

I hesitate to write this letter, because I realize that quite a few of you are very defensive about your lack of parenting skills. However, it is my belief that the situation here in the asscrack of the universe is getting severely out of hand, and I can no longer keep my thoughts on the matter to myself.

First of all, let me just say this: If you didn't want to parent your child, you shouldn't have had one. That's right. I said it. If you weren't ready for the responsiblity of a living, breathing, shitting, whining, dirty stinking tiny grasping little rugrat to be stuck to your ass for the next 15 years or so, you should have kept those legs shut. I realize that might be difficult in a town where there's a sex toy and skanky underwear shop on nearly every corner, but there have been incredible leaps and bounds in birth control in the last 30 years or so, and anyone willing to sit a couple of hours in the waiting room of the Health Department can partake of these contraceptive wonders virtually free of charge.

Nobody, including myself, put a gun to your head and forced you to breed. Therefore, it is not OUR responsiblity to look after your spawn. If I wanted to have to be constantly aware of the position of a small child in relation to my shopping cart, car bumper, feet, trash can or dog, I would have a small child of my very own. If you make the choice to take your child out in a public place, you by default make the choice to look after them while they are there. That does not mean dropping them off in the toy section of Target while you head off to housewares obliviously yakking away on your Bluetooth headset, leaving them to fend for themselves and to drag shit out all over the floor and to annoy all the other shoppers. Or to skate around on those goddamn stupid rollerskate shoes like they're outside. Or to stagger around the store on little fat legs with a reeky diaper vainly trying to keep up with your fat ass while you, chatting away to Aunt Cathy in Des Moines, speed away from them as if you were hoping that someone else might decide to snatch them up and be responsible for them.

I'm sorry, but it seems to me that the proper place for a child who cannot walk unassisted is sitting in the front of the shopping cart. That's why they put that little seatbelt there. If you don't have a shopping cart, perhaps you might try picking the child up in your arms, or, barring that, get one of those little slings that hangs across the front of you and leaves both hands free for shopping.  Few things piss me off quite so much as sitting behind the wheel in some parking lot watching some lazy ass bitch walk briskly away from her toddler, who is struggling his little heart out to follow her at a pace that his teensy bow legs just weren't designed for, lurching and squalling in the crosswalk while the useless waste that bore him repeatedly turns around hollering at the top of her lungs "I told you to COME ON, Octavarius J'miraquoi!"  This is the same bitch who will sue the shit out of you should you run over her unattended baby in said parking lot.

Also, I realize that children cry, scream and whine. Constantly. This is one of the reasons that I do not have them. That said, could you maybe, just maybe, pay attention when little Beaster starts screaming his head off in a public place like he just caught sight of Michael Jackson peeping around the corner holding the Jesus Juice? I know you've grown sensitized to the noise, but some of us find it disconcerting when we go out, wanting to shop, wanting to be left alone, only to be confronted by a different high-decebel wall of noise down each aisle we go down. It makes us unhappy. It is loud and not at all pleasant or amusing.

Not too long ago, a friend who is also a parent said to me "Well, what am I supposed to do if I'm eating my food and my husband is eating his food and she starts screaming and acting up?" The answer I gave her is the same one I give you now: Take that damn kid outside. I'm not going to pretend that I was a perfect little angel when I was little; I can remember a few times showing my ass in a public place, and when I did I can surely remember one or the other of my parents carrying my screaming ass outside to wait with me in the car. And woe unto me if Mom or Dad had to abandon a cart full of groceries or a half-eaten meal because my ass was acting bad, because the consequences would be dire. This kind of negative reinforcement, punishing bad behavior consistently and swiftly, is called "parenting", and it teaches children that their actions have consequences. I'm sorry if it steps on toes, but I don't think it's fair for me to make the choice, as a childless person, to go out in public and purchase an expensive dinner, a rare treat these days, only to have it ruined by some brat screaming in my ear, throwing food, running around and generally behaving like shit while the adoring, befuddled parents look on blankly as if they have no idea what to do. Most restaraunts these days don't allow you to smoke because your dirty habit ruins the dining fun of other patrons; I say that the same is true for screaming children, and if I were a restaraunt manager or owner watching all my other customers roll their eyes and rush through the meal with no drinks and no dessert because of one bad acting brat, I would feel just as justified in asking the parents of said beaster to take care of the situation as I would asking a patron smoking a cigar in the non-smoking section to put it out.

There is a restaraunt where your brats can scream and snot and cry and run and throw things all they want; It's called Chuck-E-Cheese, and grownups know not to eat there.

Apparently, there is a small amount of confusion around here about what constitutes appropriate behavior in children, anyway. It staggers the mind that, in a town where wearing a peace sign is "treason" and you can barely buy organic anything, people are suddenly so damn New Age-y in their parenting habits. Let me give you a few examples:

When your child is in a store destroying a display and throwing the product on the floor while you watch and laugh, he is not "Expressing himself and testing his boundaries", which is something that I honest to god recently heard a mother say to an angry store employee because little MacCauley was demolishing what looked like a day's worth of merchendising. He is being a pain in the ass. Everyone watching you laugh at his antics thinks that you are a douchebag and wishes that you'd had your tubes tied.

That high-pitched repetative scream that your kid makes when she figures out that she can make noise, the one she repeats over and over again like some kind of freakish giant bird from hell, that's not cute. Or, rather, it's cute only to you. It makes everyone else in the area want to blow his/her brains out. People are staring at you when you let your child do this, and they are thinking "God, I wish someone would shut that fucking kid up." If they happen to be smiling at you, it's because they think little Miley-Hannah is retarded.

And just because your kid is out of pull ups and into big boy drawers doesn't mean that you're off the hook, mom and dad. You child rushing up to me while I'm on the phone at my place of business helping a customer, yelling "Excuse me, can I get some help?" while snapping his fingers under my nose like I'm a taxi in a bad old movie is not cute, nor is it appropriate. If I had behaved that way towards an adult when I was a kid my mother would have tanned my ass. And I've said it time and time again, these fucking rollerskate shoes have got to go. Who the fuck invented those, anyway? The insurance companies? Osama? And how fast will you be speed dialing 1-800-SU4-BUCKS when little Orangalo smashes his tender temple into the corner of a glass display case because he's zooming around inside on skates like a rejected extra from Roll Bounce?

Fuck, people. Use common sense, goddamit. That's all I'm asking. Make all our lives more pleasant. I'm not hating on kids, really, just on parents who act as if they don't have to make their kids behave in public. A store is not a daycare. A restaraunt is not a playpin.

Seriously. Or, I swear to god, when I run this country I'll make every child who misbehaves in public wear a t-shirt that says "I'm proof my mommy likes to FUCK!" every single day until they hit 18.

Sincerely
Ro-Evil