Kids enter store, promptly go crazy

The BBQ Pit
1

Setting: Retail video/gaming store
The players: Three young kids of varying ages, two oblivious parents busy shopping
A cast of thirty extras in the store!

The plot:
Parents come in with three young kids, survey the scene and make a beeline for the section they want. The three young kids proceed to FREAK OUT and rush headlong up and down the store, chasing each other and screaming the entire time. Before the store manager could do a double-take, they’d knocked over a cardboad propped-up display of DVD movies.

Aaaand, the parents were busy looking at gadgets in the small store and probably figured this was as good a playground as any to keep the young 'uns busy while they browsed. Mom parked the massive stroller in the middle of the aisle, blocking it completely so people had to go around the other way.

The tension was palpable in the air as the climax approached. People were tsking and shaking their heads. As the little ones whizzed by, laughing, screaming and chasing each other, playing some sort of game whereby they’d get up to top running speed and then trip each other so they’d fall, various shoppers told them rather sternly to stop running and go back to their parents. Many of the cast extras were openly wondering, “Where are these kids’ parents? Are they in the store?”

The guy who turned out to be the store’s manager came striding up just as the oldest kid told one of the shoppers (an older man with a woman) who had told him to stop running to fuck off.

::cue dramatic music::

Yes, the young tyke delivered his line with plenty of attitude and sass; a director’s dream. Just enough snark to be biting, but not overdone.

The manager informed the parents that they were to gather their offspring and exit stage left immediately; this just as two other store employees were still cleaning up the DVD movie mess left behind by the stars of the show. The headliners huffily bid the stage adieu and left with very bad form.

::Cue closing credits::

As a parent myself, I was flabbergasted. My goal is to do what I can to make sure my kids behave as even-keel as possible so that there is no behavior that would cause anyone to give us the stinky eye. Any of the StormKids starts acting up and we cut the trip short and leave. It was embarrassing enough to have just reached the front of the line at the grocery checkout when the youngest StormKid had a meltdown. We got out of there as quickly as we could, but I was baffled by the parents’ absolute indifference to the damage their kids caused, their behavior in the store and the eldest kid’s response of “fuck off!” to the guy who told him to stop running in the store. Go figure.

So, clueless parents, in the movie of life, make sure you coach your kids to earn standing ovations, not to get booed off the stage.

::End of lame movie-themed pit. It was the best I could do at this hour of the night. :smiley: ::

2

I raise my glass to the store manager. Few these days have the cajones to tell customers to take their demon-spawn and get the hell out.

Salud, Store Manager! We who despise undisciplined sub-humans salute you!

3

Astounding. I didn’t even learn that word until my early teens. My mother would have started beating me on the spot and wouldn’t stop until we got home. If that.

4

++
Where is this place? I wanna shop there.

5

If I used that word I would have been part of the wall. Shut Up was a ‘swear word’ in our household.

6

I remember the first time I used the word Fuck. I had heard it at school and had no idea what it meant. At home that night, I asked my mother “What does fuck mean?” She immediately slapped me.

Actually, that short story pretty much describes in a nutshell how my parents handle innocent ignorance. But on the bright side, I learned not to swear around Mom really quickly.

7

We actually have parents drop their little kids off here for like a half an hour or more, to “play” in the kids’ vid section. Makes me want to put an alert out on some kind of pedophile network that there’s, like, a sale on or something. We’ve 86’ed a couple families who absolutely refuse to control their kids.

8

There’s a TV ad for some phone service that has older kids commiting mayhem in retail stores and it seems to suggest that it is perfectly OK to mess things up as long as you are having fun and using their silly-ass phone service. :mad: :rolleyes:

9

Hells bells, rolling our eyes was a swear word in my house!
I can’t even begin to imagine where I’d be today if I had told someone to ‘fuck off’ when I was in a store with my parents at a young age.
I wouldn’t be alive today, I’m sure. Or, if I had survived, it would have been one hell of a story!

10

A few weeks back I took a train for a 5+hour ride. There was a family of five: Dad and a boy about six sitting to the right of the aisle, 12yo girl behind them (she didn’t have a neighbor), Mom across the aisle from Daddy and boy, with a babe-in-arms. The seat beside Mom is occupied by the baby’s basket.

The boy spent the whole first half-hour whining. Well, it wasn’t that he whined the whole time, but even when he said something like “look, Daddy, the TV studios!” he made it sound like a whine. But, because God is great and merciful and apparently was having a kindly day, the damn brat happened to like the movie and mostly shut up during and after it, hallellujah.

One of the few things he said after the movie started was “Dad, you’re a total moron.” Neither parent said a thing. I try to picture one of us saying that to Dad and my imagination just fails.

At one point, the mother left to go breastfeed in the platform. She’d been holding the baby and placed her handbag on the basket. She managed to get out of her seat and leave. When she came back, she told the daughter, “here, hold.” The daughter, who was lying across both seats (uncomfortable as all get-go, since the armrest in the middle can’t be lifted) stared at her sibling like it had just fallen on her from outer space, rather than been placed into her hands by her mother. The mother went into her seat and said “give me.” The daughter stretched her hands minutely.

It was a gent from the next row over who took the baby and passed it to the mother.

Part of me still wants to hope it was a hidden camera program :frowning: What a family!

11

I’ve wanted to do the same thing.

12

Ah, Nava, children running amok on mass transit. On a trip to Italy some time in the late '90s, my husband and I sat directly behind a couple who had no interest in controlling their perhaps 3 or 4 year old boy. I understand that long plane flights like that are terribly boring for young children, and do sympathize. However, they made no attempt to keep him occupied and not bothering other passengers.

There was an empty seat next to the mother and boy, but the father was up a few rows sitting and talking with friends or family members and paying no attention. Meanwhile, whenever the little boy would do something too outrageous, the mother would very weakly call his name but otherwise not intervene. The boy threw pillows in the aisle and played on them while slow-moving old men and women had to try to step around him and his obstacles when going to/from the lavatory. He tried to pull apart at least one set of airline headphones. He yelled - not crying, but rather “using his outside voice.”

To be fair, I’m not sure I saw any toys or other means of occupying him, but again his parents should have been responsible enough to bring such things. At one point, his mother had given him a snack of something sticky (perhaps peanut butter or Nutella on some bread or cracker) and so he was quiet while eating it. I took that opportunity to go back to the lavatory, leaving the large cross-stitch work I was doing on my tray table. When I returned, my husband quietly told me that little Damien had turned around, saw the colorful work, and reached between the seats with a goo-covered hand towards the cloth. My husband glared at him and gave him a firm “No!” The boy recoiled as if stunned, stared a moment, then sat down in the seat, remaining quiet. My husband suggested he’d never heard the word used before, at least not in any kind of manner that suggest it was really meant. The kid did act up again later but at least he didn’t directly bother us.

13

I once had the bad luck to sit behind a kid on an airplane; the little brat thought it was a lot of fun to bring his seat back fully upright and then to fully reclined. The third or fourth time he did it, I leaned up and asked him to stop. His father, who was sitting across the aisle from him, glared at me and said, “He’s just a kid.” I glared back and said, “You’re not and the next time it happens, I’m holding you responsible.” The father’s solution astonished me; he traded seats with the kid, who promptly went back to doing the same seat trick. The lady behind him had to complain to the steward who in turn had to tell the father to control the brat.

14

There’s a commercial in another language (might be french?) that finds a dad with his kid in a supermarket. Kid spots something sweet he wants, dad says no. Kid proceeds to have tantrum. Dad rolls his eyes through several cuts.

The unmistakable horsehead emblem of Trojan brand condoms pops up as the scene goes out of focus.

15

I’m always stunned at people’s indifference to how much they intrude in the lives of others.

One of the guys I work with actually said: Dude, I didn’t choose to not have kids, why should I let your choice inconvenience me?

16

This sort of thing happened to me just yesterday. I stopped into the gas station to get some smokes and as I was approaching the door I saw a family get out of their car. The mother, well I think it was the mother, was talking on her cell phone. The three kids start heading for the door. The middle child goes running up to the door, darts in front of me and opens the door, letting it slam in my face.

I then enter store and go to the counter and ask for my cigs. As the clerk is getting them the middle child creeps around the counter and the clerk says hi. Apparently they know each other. She comments on his clothing. I assume they must have been new or something. So as the clerk is ringing me up in walks mom with the smallest child and the oldest. The smallest runs behind counter. The clerk again stops my order to say hi to smallest kid and also comments on his clothing. I guess it must have been shopping day. I don’t know.

I finish my transaction and as I turn I notice candy bars on the ground. Middle child runs into me as I am trying to exit the door and then smallest child is on the floor doing some sort of circles and babbling.

As I am exiting the door I hear mom stop her cell phone conversation long enough to say “Get off the floor with those clothes”, “Get off the floor with those clothes”, “Get off the floor with those clothes”. As far as I could tell the mother was making no attempt to actually walk over and remove the child from the floor.

Oldest child said nothing and did nothing the entire time. In fact he exited the store and was walking back to the car as I was pulling out. I quess he wanted some peace and quiet or maybe he was upset he did not get new clothes.

17

Well, you shouldn’t smoke, anyway.

18

I never would have made it home. Still wouldn’t.

19

Children are wonderful unique little beings. I believe that adults must give them free rein to express themselves, lest they be traumatized by disapproval and their self-actualization hindered.

20

Then I dare not tell the story of the screaming rude children at the bar. :stuck_out_tongue: