The boombox is a nice touch.
Word. A friend of mine with a tall kid took to remarking loudly “And she’s only two (or three)” whenever her child’s self control didn’t match her apparent age.
[Moderating]
isosleepy, adding editorial comments to a quote box, when quoting another poster, is a violation of the board rules. Please avoid doing this in the future.
No warning issued.
[/Moderating]
If I had started to act like that in a store as a kid, either of my parents would’ve taken me out to the car until I settled down. Granted, I knew better, because I knew it wouldn’t work. If it was at home, they usually went in the other room until I tired myself out. The only thing I ever ended up getting was a bad headache.
IF said story actually happened, the best thing to do is let the kid cry himself out. It’s possible that was what the mother was doing – not giving the kid the attention he wanted. She probably wanted you to stay out of it, since it probably would make it worse. Which it did.
If, of course, it actually happened.
Eh, my dad has one. Not like the one Scylla described, mind you, but when he gets mad, he just gets this LOOK on his face, that always compelled me to behave. Just because I knew then that I was in deep shit. (No, he never hit me or anything, but when he got mad, he just LOOKED so fucking scary!)
My dad’s also six-three, and he just looks really intimidating. And he’s got that old-fashioned Irish temper, so he’ll just start yelling. Which I inherited. 
I take literary license. My snarky comment benefitted from post facto editing. It is possible, barely possible that there might be some small hyperbole in the description of the qualities of my sneer.
Begbert did use the phrase “Our Hero”- it wasn’t added.
Many writers do, often to delightful comic effect.
The trick is to amuse readers without giving the impression that you are chortling to yourself as you write, “Move over, Dave Barry, everyone who reads this will be in awe of my extraordinary writing skill. Damn, I am uniquely hilarious, if I do say so myself. It’s already a knee-slapper, but I think I shall lovingly polish this essay a bit more, to earn even greater admiration from my adoring readers.”
There will never be universal agreement on what constitutes effortless humor and what smacks of authorial preening. You do have a fan club, no question. For others, your style is irritating. Perhaps that irritation contributes to the poor reception you’re getting.
But “Summary not full of lies:” was.
I know this isn’t ATMB, but “Summary not full of lies” was in begbert2’s original quote.
Damn, you’re right.
[Moderation]
Note rescinded. My apologies for the error.
[/Moderation]
The writing is too overworked to be amusing, (but I guess it was an honest try).
Maybe if he’d actually snatched candy from the child?
What do you know. This is today’s Calvin and Hobbes.
You have license to parent your kids however you want. Treating other people’s kids like you do your own is not going to earn you attaboys. It will earn you requests to stop, just as that mother did.
So you should understand the mother’s perspective when she saw a big strange man leaning into her child’s face, sneering and speaking to him in a way to cause him to collapse on the floor, crying. It’s the type of scene that doesn’t lend itself to only the most innocuous interpretations. Even still, she handled it calmly.
Again, “correction” is not getting down into a kid’s face and trying to make him feel bad. If all you’d said was no, this thread wouldn’t exist. And neither would yours (because you wouldn’t have the opportunity to regale us with details about your douchey sneer).
See, I don’t get this part. She was so polite and soft spoken when she asked you to stop messing with her kid, so that gave you license to double down on rudeness? WTH? See this as a sign of walking around with too much aggression. It sounds like you were looking for a fight.
Perfect.
That is exactly the way I think!
Perhaps. If I don’t particularly enjoy a story or the way it’s written I just stop reading. I don’t find it necessary to shit on the author because his style grates on me personally. The idea that those that do seem to dislike my style of writing would indicate that I am offensive to assholes. I find that appealing.
As appealing as it is, I doubt that’s the case. I think that the internet has evolved and this board with it. The result being that this board holds an unusual concentration of what I call “Woke Scolds.” These are just shitheads who get their jollies by going around virtue signaling by pointing out perceived flaws in others’ thinking or word choice and presenting those as indicative of deep character flaws. It’s character assassination disguised as social justice. Though I don’t post on twitter there’s an especially lot of it there, as well. I despise them, as they seem to get off on trying to make other people feel bad, and are generally humorless assholes.
(I should clarify that I think VT’s comment doesn’t really belong in this thread; and, my appreciation of it has nothing to with political leanings of Scylla it anyone else in this thread, of which I know nothing).
Nah, I’ve been parenting before the internet was a thing, and found attitudes and stories like yours depressing for their lack of human empathy and self-serving nonsense.
What the internet has done is emboldened people to think that a lack of compassion and stories of humiliating other people is fodder for readers amusement.
I think it’s possible that Scylla’s harsh attitude towards the stranger’s child in a public place is related to his continued frustration and anger at himself for being so incredibly wrong about the history of last year’s government shutdown in a thread earlier in the summer, blaming the Democrats when the Democrats actually passed a funding bill that was previously supported unanimously by all Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. And he wasn’t just wrong – he was so wrong he couldn’t acknowledge or even accept it, instead refusing to address it at all.
But it’s okay, Scylla. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes. It’s not really that big a deal, and it doesn’t have to cause months of anger and frustration that explode onto an unsuspecting child in a public place. I’ve been wrong too. You’re gonna be okay!
Just a possibility, anyway.
Perhaps. I on the other hand have no issue with your writing style - I rather fondly remember “the horror of blimps” for example. I had trouble with the substance of the particular post. You were judge, jury and executioner of a women and her misbehaving child, knowing exactly nothing about her, her kid, what did or didn’t happen before they came into the store, the home they go back to - any of it. But you decided to make her day a little worse regardless. And you were obviously proud of it.
If I had a stylistic criticism it would be how you didn’t finish the story, which ideally would have incorporated elements such as wearing Underoos over your pants and a large flowing cape over your shoulders depicting a decapitated Barney bleeding profusely from his neck, as an outfit in which you go around making Target safe for - well not sure for whom, but by Jove you’re doing something.