The generations that we are raising right now.

     I see many posts on Facebook about children who are out of control.  I hear people talk about it when I am at Starbucks, and this holiday season when I have been out and about in town and I noticed out of control children everywhere that I have gone.
   
     Sunday I decided to take the dogs for a ride and I wanted to practice taking still life photo's so I loaded the boys into the Exploder and we drove down to Coolidge Arizona to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.  It was a nice quiet drive stopping to take photo's of an old Catholic church and various cool cactus's along the way.  When I got to the monument I was pleasantly surprised there is a really nice welcome/museum ranger station and the park is really simple and clean.  What amazed me the most when taking the self guided tour was two kids that were screaming and playing wildly while everybody else was quiet.  At one point one of the rangers politely asked the parents to please keep the kids quiet out of respect for the rest of the patrons.   Unfortunately this had zero effect as the parents nodded their heads like stoned zombies and proceeded to continue to let the little bastards scream and holler and play tag etc, in what is really a nice quiet place.  Finally a different park ranger asked them to please leave the exhibit and take the children outside to keep from disrupting the experience for the rest of us.  He was exceedingly polite, and did his best not to insult the parents but the wife would have none of it and declared she had never been so insulted. she was just trying to show her children some Arizona history.  That was the joke of the day because neither parent was interacting at all with the kids.  They were looking at various exhibits, the grandmother had given up and was sitting on a bench outside and the grandfather had walked out to the ruins to take photo's.
   
     The park ranger made them go out the front of the building and gave them a refund because she was not going to let them go through to the ruins.  I thought that was awesome.  Unfortunately about 20 minutes the silence of the park was shattered by the sound of a car alarm going off.  You guessed it, the car belonged to the loud people and somehow the rotten shits had managed to set off the alarm. The parents were off wandering in the desert and a park ranger had to track them down and ask them to come and turn the alarm off.  I have to say I was shocked. I haven't seen parents that out of touch in a long time.  It was like they were purposefully ignoring their children and had no respect for others.  I was leaving as they were trying to get the rotten shits loaded up and when I passed behind the car I asked the dad if he would like to give me $5.00 because his kids had basically ruined my trip.  He told me to" go to hell."  I replied that it" would be infinitely better than spending 20 minutes with his fucking kids".  He was not impressed.    

     Who is taking responsibility for raising kids these days.  When you go to a restaurant and look around at a table after a family leaves and it looks like a buffet at an elephant bar.  Food is all over the floor the table looks like somebody threw up on it and the dishes are all in disarray.  They run wild at grocery stores.  I was at Fry's the other day and one mother was encouraging her infant to make that wild high pitched squeal sound that some kids can make.  I wanted to take ice pic's to my ears.  

     One time at a horse show in Carthage Missouri I had a customer that actually turned a water hose on a kid and told her to go away.  I remember watching it happen today as clear as if it was yesterday.  The little girl was wandering around the barn alley without supervision as Janet was grooming her horses.  Both of her show horses at the time were Studs and she expected them to behave perfectly.  Janet believed rightfully so that if the boys got out of line she would whip their ass.  One of them was a little squealy that afternoon and when she whipped his ass for it he set back against his lead rope and bumped into the little girl knocking her down.  She was unhurt but surprised so she cried a bit and wandered off only to return a few minutes later.  Now Janet was filling her water buckets and the little girl was standing under one of the studs necks between his and the stall.  Janet said where are your parents,  and the little girl made some motion and continued to hang around.  At this point Janet just turned the water hose on her and said its time for you to go home and not come back.   I was horrified at the time.  Now I think she was perfectly within her rights.