Maybe not, but you don’t know entertainment until you’ve hotboxed a bunch of 5-year-olds in a bouncy castle.
If you’re fat enough to take up an aisle, like a carriage does (not a stroller), you’re probaby too fat to leave your house in the first place.
If your wheel chair takes up the whole aisle, I really don’t think if it’s safe for you to be in that store. What if your wheel chair gets stuck in there?
The Japanese are typically polite. The butt and what it does are not taboo subjects over here. I’ve overheard people talking about constipation at the dinner table.
As for being an authority figure, as a foreign assistant teacher, I am only a quasi-authority figure. I am also sorta like their special buddy. I have never seen a full-blown teacher get kanchoed.
I have grown not to mind it so much, although I draw the line when the boys are 13.
People don’t always tell you the truth when they say it wasn’t a problem that you brought your un-invited kid. For example, a couple brought their two kids to my sister’s 40th birthday dinner in a restaurant (for no better reason than because they didn’t bother getting a sitter). Because the restaurant had been told there would be no kids, they seated us in the lounge - kids aren’t allowed in that lounge, and other families were upset that they were told they couldn’t sit in the lounge with their kids, while they could see these two kids sitting in there (we found this out when they asked the parents to move the kids so they couldn’t be seen). They were told by the hosts that bringing their kids was fine when they showed up WITH them - what else were we going to say? (I hope they figured out from what the restaurant manager said that it was indeed a problem to bring un-invited children.)
Bringing uninvited* guests to somebody else’s event is always terribly rude, whether they’re adults, children or dogs.
- If an invitation is explicitly open to extras, they’re not uninvited.
Heh, I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that I’m not totally clueless. 
If I was the only person to show up to an event with kids in tow, obviously I’d be wondering - but since I’m usually in the be-kidded majority, not the child-free minority, I don’t wonder very hard.
That gets back to my point about social circles. I have kids. My brother has kids. Most of my friends have kids (I’m in my early 40s). Naturally, most events are gonna feature kids, that’s just inherent in the nature of things - if they don’t, obviously, the host had better make it clear and obvious, or it had better be obvious from the nature of the event - in my position, if I was having a party in the afternoon and invite my brother and my friends, it would be super-duper-obnoxious to make it a kids-free event by the simple expedient of only mentioning my brother and his wife and my friends and their wives/husbands on the invite, without letting them know very specifically that kids are not welcome - that would take them very much by surprise.
You know, you seem to think that lots of things are really rude that aren’t particularly rude at all.
Sometimes in life you need to go around someone. Sometimes that person is larger, in a wheelchair or mobility scooter, has a pram with a baby in it, is pushing a cart, etc. Assuming the person is not blocking ALL the lanes with their whatever, and assuming they are making an effort to minimize the impact of their bigness on others they are not being rude at all.
Good grief - heaven forbid you should be inconvenienced by having to go around another patron. Jesus wept.
A few years ago this was what everyone’s parties were in our group…the people who had their kids first and last sort of get the short end of the stick in finding sitters. Early on, most of us where young, single, and kid free - and the parties weren’t terribly kid friendly - they started later, had more drinking and extreme flirting (that didn’t always end at flirting). Those that had their kids early either didn’t bring them or didn’t come.
Then critical mass was established. If you wanted to be social, you needed to invite the kids - even the single folks figured out that parties needed to start at 3pm, be kid friendly, and that their friends were mostly leaving by ten. I remember my childless brother in law coming into town after a few years out of state and we were going to host a party so he’d get to see his friends. He wanted it to start at 9pm. We said 'start a party at 9 around here now and here is the list of people who won’t even bother to show…you need to start it so people can get their kids to bed." It was the very rare event that was just adults, and they stuck out as special occasions. Several of our parties featured Super Jumps for the kids or other activities to keep them busy.
Then the oldest set got to be teenagers, capable of watching their younger siblings, and some of the couples started showing up without their kids. Then the set that arrived as babies in a bulk mass over about four years started reaching stay at home alone or “its easy to get a sleepover” age, and we lost more kids - plus your parents friends’ kids are lame - you like your own friends better. Its also impossible to schedule those afternoon get togethers because the kids all have activities. And the parties started happening later, with fewer kids and now we’ve crossed into “for an evening party, don’t assume.”
As it happens, I’m just skinny enough to get out my front door, get on my wheelchair with the aid of a motorized hoist, and thereby push my custom built double wide stroller to the shop. I don’t put any kids in there, I use it to gather roadkill.
I rarely get stuck in an aisle. Mostly the problem is knocking items off shelves. I don’t buy anything most days, unless they put stuff on the clearance rack because I knocked it off the shelf and damaged it. It’s nice of you to ask after my safety, though, thanks. The main danger in my daily routine occurs when I drive my wheelchair on the freeway looking for roadkill.
I don’t get how this is a “formula”, or how it’s something people “know” or “don’t know” about. It seems to me that putting the names of the people who are invited on the invitation is plain common sense. If the invitation doesn’t explicitly exclude your dentist or your dog, you don’t think it’s ok to bring them, why are kids different? I know you’re right that not everybody seems to understand this, so when I’m in doubt I either don’t bring my kids, or I ask whether they are expected to come or not. I just thoroughly don’t understand WHY this is the case, it just makes so much stinkin sense to invite who you want without assuming they will assume to bring people you did not invite, and for the recipient of an invitation to bring only the people invited, without making assumptions that others must be included. How in the world does it make sense that this is not universally followed?
Because many people, for some strange and inexplicable reason, assume that one’s kids are more a part of one’s family than one’s dentist? Just a suspicion. 
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
I just don’t get why someone would assume that their entire family is invited to an event if only some of the family members receive an invitation. (Or why someone would issue an invitation to only some family members if they wanted the entire family to attend).
Please don’t take this as an attack on you! I know you’re right that this is not how the real world works, I just can’t for the life of me comprehend why it isn’t.
But plenty of people do believe their dog is part of the family…
Hm, it’s weird, then, that Japan is the only country where in a public I’ve encountered a contraption that masks natural sounds with a waterfall noise, presumably so as not to disturb the delicate ears of people in adjacent stalls. I found that thing very fascinating.
The wrongness of this cannot possibly be overstated. :eek:
It hasn’t reached the point where dogs are equated with children, at least in the majority view.
Whoops, stupid posting on a phone!! Of course I meant I’ve encountered that contraption in a public** bathroom**, in case you hadn’t worked that out. :smack:
What does that have to do with anything, though? Your dog, dentist, 3rd grade teacher, cousin, sister-in-law, mailman, or your children - it doesn’t matter. If I wanted to invite them, I’d invite them. Like I said before, if I want to invite the whole family, then I would. What is the possible logic in issuing an invitation to part of the family rather than to each person you actually want to attend? Don’t we learn this in kindergarten? When little Susie gets a birthday invite, does she assume her parents and siblings are invited too? When do we start disregarding the names actually on the invitation? Why do we even bother putting any names on an invitation at all if it’s so irrelevant?
Seems that context is at the fore here. If I get an invite from, say, a cousin for a family birthday party and I have both a SO and children, it is quite fair of me to assume that the entire family is invited. In fact, lacking precedence to the contrary, it would be really weird for me to read an invite and think, " Best leave the wife and kids at home when going to celebrate Gramma’s 90th Birthday. Since their name was not specified in the invite." Please.
My company is family owned. If they held a BBQ for Employees and I was invited, I’d go alone. ( That is what they do. ). If they held a BBQ for the X Company Family and all family is heartily invited, I’d check but would reasonably assume all family members are invited. If an RSVP is requested and a place is there for _____ People Attending, that tells me that all family can come.
Two words: social context. Two more: reasonable expectations.
It is simply wierd to insist that an invite to some event could not possibly be intended, no siree, to extent to the whole family (which includes spouse and kids but excludes dogs, mailmen, or dentists) when some sizable majority of folks understand it to include the family, intend it to include the family, and have always, reliably in the past, understood and intended it to include the family.
This is particularly true where the events are typical family events - backyard BBQs, weddings, etc.
Your choice of little Suzy in kindergarden to illustrate your position is particularly inapt, since inviting little Suzy is, quite often, an invite for a parent/guardian as well, in my experience - certainly little Suzy isn’t going to drive herself to the party, or in most cases going to walk there on her own (if it is close enough to walk).