day under punches

For some reason, kids like to punch. I spent the day getting whomped on at a children's party. It was the same bunch of kids as the last few years, but they've gotten older, and hit harder. It's kinda funny at first, whether it's getting hit by plastic balls or stuffed animals or hula hoops. Or little fingers grabbing chunks of hair. But kids get stuck in a loop, where they just keep doing the same thing over and over, long after it's not funny or cute anymore. So, whomp whomp. At one point we tried talking about pets, hoping to calm them down. One of the little girls explained how she liked to whirl her cat around over her head and whack it on the refrigerator. Someday, this person will grow up and some guy is going to marry her. Wow.

You know, if you treat them nicely, our pets just want to curl up next to us and keep us warm. We keep our kids at greater distance. Now we're in a madhouse where they can hit and we can't tap them back, even to get them back on track. Maybe one smack can get them off the Ten Step serial killer program. No. Unthinkable rave.

We can imagine the little punchers someday testing rockets or trying out for olympic events. Maybe stealing cars, who knows? Nature & nurture & all that jazz.

But it would be worse to have all the punch go out of them and find them packing bags at a grocery store, various flavors of little servants lost and used up like canaries in our mad-rush mostly virtual coal mine, little capacitors in our vast machine, losing a little steam every day.

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real life?, 11/13/05