Actually, this sounds like something my dad would have called me as a term of enderment when I was growing up. He used to call my brother “BumBuffer”.
No, I’m not kidding.
Anyhow, I thought it was kind of funny for just that reason. 
Well, she should probably brush her teeth more often and take a calcium suplement too - that doesn’t change the fact that she really didn’t do much of anything wrong other than be annoyed by a child and post about it here. She doesn’t even seem particularly worked up about it. Your posts, on the other hand, read as though you’re ready to reach into your monitor and throttle someone. Obviously there’s back history that I’m not getting but you really seem pissed off about a rather innocious little thread.
Finally, I’m sure I’ve never seen featherlou refer to people as breeders or call children crotch apples (regardless of how funny I find that term) although Deagan did.
But she started the thread KNOWING it would be a free for all child bashing party. I don’t see her saying that bitchslapping a kid woud be wrong, or giving a busload of kids the finger.
And it was quite clear that Deagan was NOT using crotchapple as a term of endearment. He doesn’t like children, and THEN he called them names.
Oh and for those who say if you don’t like don’t read it, I was directed to this thread by a friend, so I stopped in, quite late in the game. Like I’ve said before, if featherlou doesn’t want dissenting opinions, she shouldn’t post it on a message board.
And I DO consider an across the board hatred of children to be bigotry. To say that all kids are boring, obnoxious, smelly (?), sticky (?) or YARD APES or some such shit is making a broad generalization, and that’s narrow minded and wrong. Some kids are uniquely horrible, some are amazing and a blast to hang out with.
The process by which a child becomes an “adult” consists of a series of extremely painful & traumatic personal experiences that scar us emotionally, & change our behavior.
That is all “maturation” really is : the process by which innocent (i.e. inexperienced) children acquire scars on their souls.
featherlou --it’s obvious that your scars still hurt. They make the presence of small children a pain.
I’m sorry.
But adding new emotional scars to kids (small or big ones, either way) is not a good response. You were a child once, too.
jarbabyj – featherlou’s experiences in life have left her a little alienated towards other kids. Her scars hurt. Please do not poke her scars. It’s unkind.
Ghod—I sound like Mr. Rogers…
Okay, I think I understand now.
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The only child who is worth tolerating is one who never speaks to an adult unless spoken to, and then only to say “Yes sir/ma’am; no sir/ma’am.”
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When you become an adult (18? 21? 30?), you can be as much of an asshole as you want.
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Children deserve no respect whatsoever from adults. If they put one toe out of line, bitchslap them.
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If this intolerance results in a child’s taking a defensive attitude around adults, that just proves that bitchslapping is justified.
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If an adult is rude to a child, the child should accept it, learn their “lesson”, and get over it.
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If a child is rude, or even less than completely obsequious, to an adult, that’s a horrible injustice. The adult shouldn’t be expected to get over it. It’s ridiculous to think that they should have a thick enough skin that the “rudeness” wouldn’t even register.
So featherlou gets carte blanche to be unkind to little kids, but we can’t criticize her. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being an adult…hurting children’s feelings!
What fun!
Sorry, Bosda…I didn’t preview…
please review my entire post.
Thank you.
I DID. But I think telling the rest of us to walk on eggshells around featherlou is completely unfair. WE were not made privy to what makes her hate children, so I was not aware I was ‘poking at scars’. Also, she is not the only one many of us are addressing in this thread. Several other people are taking cheap shots at yard apes and sprogs
I think that we all know that arsehole children grow up into arsehole adults.
The evidence is all around us. Arseholery does not descend from the clouds onto a person when he reaches a nebulous and arbitrary age.
Any child will naturally be an arsehole unless he is corrected by his parents. Parenting is a skill and if it ain’t done properly, then guess what?
An arsehole child results who will, indupitably, turn into an arsehole adult.
As for the rest of your points - Sarcasm, eh?
That’s a no-no, in this thread; the worthy and earnest members of the obsessive self-righteous cult known as the Worshippers at the Shrine of The Child might see it.
They don’t like sarcasm at all, you know. And they are **very ** bossy.
Well; they are if you’re an adult.
Yes, because anyone who thinks we should swear and slap little children is in an obsessive cult :rolleyes:
Uh, shouldn’t swear?
Oh goody, then she must know what the winning lotto numbers are tonight too! Nah more likely you can just read peoples minds.
yes shouldn’t. sorry.
jarbabyj, Huh, I re read the OP and am not seeing where featherlou was being unkind. Now it may be that you guys have some history of which I am not aware, but failing some context, the way that you are criticizing her seems odd.
With that said, I will cop to the fact that it was I that suggested the well-applied bitchslap on page one. There are a couple of ways to look at this. Way number one is that I go around physically abusing random children that cross my path. Way number two is that I was engaging in hyperbole in order to make my point. I leave it to you to decide which is true.
I will say, with the exception of the bird-flipping incident, I am not really seeing anyone being unkind or advocating being unkind to children here (an even in that case, I am inclined to give it a pass as by 13 the kids should know better). If the issue at hand is some sort of hate speech thing, it would be good if you just came out and said so.
Look, as I see it there has been some strange shift in the way that children behave towards adults. As I mentioned earlier, it would have been beyond imagining for me (as a child) to even contemplate correcting adult behavior.
So how about this for a compromise: If I (as a good member of society) need to walk around constantly setting a good example for children, then (in the spirit of “it takes a village to raise a child”) I also get some say in how all of these children are raised. Or, I could keep to myself and parents could teach their children to do the same (as they used to).
I see both sides of the story. The kid was IMHO, a brat and completely out of line. Instead of yelling at the kid or being snide, featherlou comes on the board to relate an annoying experience that happened, so I don’t understand the patronizing attidude of a few posters. However, I don’t quite understand the hostility toward children. They can’t help being 6 or 7 or 10, or being not quite rational yet. I guess I don’t understand the “Children are SO wonderful!” camp or the “Kids suck! Why can’t we wave a magic wand and make all of them instantly 13/18/21?” camps.
I guess I’ll just repeat a few points I’ve already brought up.
- It’s COMMON KNOWLEDGE that featherlou dislikes being around children. Whenever I hear the term ‘childfree’, I think of her. It’s her gig. I doubt she’s surprised to find it degenerating into a contest of who can hate kids the most. If I started a thread called “A MAN WAS MEAN TO ME LAST WEEK” it would quickly be divided into “Pro Men” “Anti-Men” by the end of page one.
Also, I think referring to ‘releasing them from a zoo’ is unkind. Offensive, horrifying, unacceptable? No. But UNKIND, certainly. But I’m sure she’ll come in and say it was a joke.
- I’m not only responding to featherlou. Your post on page 1 was entirely hostile towards the seven year old crossing guard (I can’t believe I’m typing that), with or without the suggestion of 'bitchslapping" him. People love to call hyperbole three days after the fact, but the thing is, a kid asking you to cross with the guard riled you up enough to even SUGGEST it.
And let’s not forget Jayjay who flipped off a whole busload of children to ‘teach them a lesson’.
Then came Deagan with is vicious characterization of kids (NOT TERMS OF ENDEARMENT), followed by is claim that kids are boring, smelly, sticking, unintelligent and whatever.
then we have CURLY CHICK who seems to think anyone who likes kids or indeed doesn’t find them repellent is in some sort of cult.
Do I react strongly to this thread because I absolutely love children and want to have them? Of course. OF COURSE. I just had the opportunity to visit a one week old little girl yesterday and it was FASCINATING. A brand new human, discovering it’s limbs and abilities, ready to be taught and loved…I just can’t see where something like that can be considered “boring” or disgusting.
So yes, perhaps I’m over reacting. I also think featherlou is over reacting to a kid carrying out his first job. Could it have been his first day? He was just learning who was in his juristiction and who wasn’t? Is it possible that she could have said “Don’t worry, I’m old enough to look where I’m going” instead of building up a head of angry steam and carrying it with her all day?
We always tell adults to give other adults some slack, the benefit of the doubt, a second chance…but this kid says one ‘snotty’ (which we can never know for sure) thing to one woman and all of the sudden it’s the dowfall of Western Civilization where no children have manners, they don’t bathe, and are generally running around like beasts…which…of course, I’ve very RARELY found to be the case.
Well, jarbabyj, I would say that if something were COMMON KNOWLEDGE then I WOULD KNOW ABOUT IT always assuming that I didn’t HAVE SOME OVER SENSITIVITY TO THE ISSUE. Unless you want me to just TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT which is something that WE DON"T TEND TO DO HERE.
That aside, you simply seem out of whack here. Again, with the possible exception of the bird-flipping incident, I have not seen any acts of hostility towards children in this thread. Also, I would be inclined to give the bird-flipping a pass based on the ages of the children (think about the minimum posting age for this very message board and the things that one can encounter here). As for my “calling hyperbole three days later” I can not believe that I would even have to point this out, as it was so over the top. If you think that I am actually advocating hitting random children, I don’t really know what to tell you, as this is so obviously not the case.
What it seems to boil down to, as far as I can tell, is that you have some huge problem with the way that some people feel about children. It seems to be some desire on your part to chastise people for their thoughts. Don’t.
I don’t believe I have ever said that I didn’t want dissenting opinions, or that people had to tiptoe around my uninterest in children, or that I hate children. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth.
Did I know that this thread would degenerate into kid-bashing? No, actually, I didn’t. Thank you for assigning such Machiavellian schemes to me, but I really hadn’t planned that far in the future. I also don’t feel responsible for people who came in and advocated treating the kid in the OP differently than I actually treated him. Those were their words, not mine.
jarbaby, if you have such a big problem with people who don’t share your opinions about children, why don’t you go start your own pit thread?
Umm…because there’s already one here? 
I’m honestly sorry I stumbled into this thread. It makes me sad, frankly. No one on the planet should tell you you have to ‘belong to the cult of children’ like curly said. I don’t belong to a CULT of children, I just like 'em. I want to raise 'em, clean and simple.
And I certainly wouldn’t force you into HAVING or being around children. Nor did I know until Bosda posted that you had some terrible childhood experiences that lead you to dislike all kids…
Bottom line is, the issue is deeper than a crossing guard. For that one incident (a kid talking to you in a ‘tone’) to touch such angry nerves with so many people is bizarre to me.