It is not sheltered to have lived a life free of making nightmarish decisions. Plenty of us have seen horror in our lives. I watched my Mother die in front of me when I was four years old. I haven’t forgotten it, and I understood perfectly what happened without having it explained to me. My Father remarried, an abusive psychopath, who was a stay-at-home Mom, who I had to stay with. I lived my own horror, as I am sure plenty of people here have as well. I’ve watched people die. I’ve seen people mistreat each other. I’ve known rapists and murderers. I’ve known people who died of drug overdoses, I’ve been in abusive relationships, and I’ve been next to homeless. And yet, I’ve never had to make the decision to murder a baby.
All you have to do is start an “appropriate dress” for the very same “nice restaurant” to see the people who have yet to be properly acculturated come out of the woodwork. (“I don’t see what’s wrong about wearing my ballcap in a nice restaurant. I’m paying for the meal!”)
I can process the heck out of it, myself, and even supported the idea as realistic by citing a nonfiction book as describing such a situation, but if you say “I’d kill a baby that was driving me crazy” and “I’d call CPS”, the extremity of the first statement undercuts your claim that you were only kidding about the second.
Besides, it’s dumb. The mere presence of an infant accompanied by adults in a public place at 2 a.m. is in no way indicative of abuse or neglect or indeed anything the CPS was set up to prevent. For further comments I refer you to the wisdom of Dave Chappelle:
That was a rotten situation. But at the same time CPS is often blasted because they didn’t investigate a situation thoroughly enough, overlooked red flags, and children where abused or killed. I think children are too coddled in this society, but even I think sometimes it is better for there to have been an investigation which might be more than a little uncomfortable that found no wrong-doing; than, to ignore possible crimes.
So, I guess I should just strangle the brat, so I can enjoy my meal in peace. Afterwards I guess I should drop the corpse off at Freudian Slit’s so she can barbeque the next day. That’s sacrasm in case anyone is anyone has inhaled too many diaper fumes to be able to reasonably process information. Seriously, a baby out at 2:00 a.m. doesn’t seem a little wierd to you? I would wonder at least.
I think it’s probably a good idea to be aware of your surroundings and if something seems odd, question it. The neighbors of Jaycee Lee Dugard’s kidnappers had seen the tents in the backyard for years. Some of them had also seen the kidnap victim and her two children, but nobody asked themselves any further questions, questions that in hindsight it’s easy to say should have been asked.
The problem is that, for us to easily identify hyperbole, it needs to be distinguishable from your general manner of posting. When just about everything you say is sociopathic or idiotic, it becomes hard to separate the hyperbole from the idiocy.
Right, this situation is almost identical to someone bringing a toddler to Denny’s past midnight. And “questioning something” is almost identical to calling CPS.
Tell me, are there actual rabbits living in your brain, or is it just the warren?
But ZPG, “A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.” Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
The last time I was in this situation, I was with a male friend, and we were at Red Lobster. I realize that RL’s not exactly gourmet, but you can easily rack up a $100 tab for two, so I do find it more annoying than if we were at, say, Applebee’s. My friend’s way of handling the screaming newborn-having parents behind us was to look directly at them periodically and say to me, “I wish someone would shut that fucking baby up.” Not exactly Miss Manners, but it did work. After about 10 minutes and hearing him say it 3 times, they did ask for boxes, and they did leave. Not without giving him a very mean look though! It worked for me.
As part of the compact that parents agree to remove crying babies when they cannot be quickly soothed, two things will be necessary: climate controlled foyers so that said babies won’t have to be taken out into the elements would be first. Second would be that never, ever again will any busybody asshole attack any mother and suggest that she leave or make her baby eat under a blanket or on a toilet because it drinks from a breast, not a bottle.
