Happy May Day!
      …or, as it was around our neighborhood when we were small, Happy Hang-a-Paper-Basket-Filled-With-Flowers-On-A-Neighbor’s-Doorknob Day! Ding dong ditch – only without the flaming poop! I remember doing it several years, as a kid. Making paper flowers, or stealing real ones, and stapling construction paper into various baskets (sometimes woven with strips of paper, or conical, or cylindrical) then hanging them on Dixie & Jeff’s door, or the Graham Family’s door, or Noreen’s door. Those are fun, sweet, innocent memories.
      I wonder if children still do things like that.
      They don’t do much that involves going door-to-door, for “safety’s sake”. But the world could use more random acts of kindness, I think. More making the elderly lady next door smile, less rudely knocking her cart out of the way at the grocery store when she’s moving too slow for you. Yeah, I saw that yesterday at Giant.
      A pair of obnoxious teens (not in school at 1pm on a weekday) were trying to look at the chips display. This sweet little old lady, who I see in there frequently with her husband who must be 90, was hemming and hawing over whether to get classic Lays or the new Roasted Garlic & Sea Salt Wavy Lays. It was like, thirty or sixty seconds. They could have waited, or politely asked if they could reach around her, or even been jackwagons and said, “Move it, old lady!”. Instead, one grabbed her cart and yanked it out of the way, huffing and grumbling like not being able to get to the Cheetos instantly was THE BIGGEST, WORST THING EVER.
      She didn’t say anything to them, and when I gave her a sympathetic, apologetic look, she smiled back, but the poor dear seemed so… hurt by the whole thing. Not angry, just disappointed in the lack of manners.
      I saw those same kids in the check-out (they were behind me, in fact) and they were flipping through the trashy magazines with greasy fingers (they had opened those Cheetos, by the by… I didn’t stop to see if they paid for them) and bitching about one of the Kardashian sisters. I mean, full on f-bombs and all assorted cursing about her “slutty, fat ass”.
      There were small children in a cart in the next aisle.
      Their mother looked appalled but didn’t say anything. The checker glowered a little, but didn’t say anything. The lady bagging groceries kept shooting dirty glances at them, but didn’t speak up either.
      No, I didn’t say anything either.
      What was really maddening though? Turns out the lady in the motorized cart in front of me was the mother of at least one of those idiotic teenagers. She did not tell them to watch themselves, she did not seem to notice their behavior at all. I just… I wanted to smack her and tell her to raise her children right.
      I think that a lot.
      Raise your children right.
      But the world is an increasingly awful place, I guess, and parents don’t want to have to work for anything, let lone have to work to keep their brats in line. I ranted about this sort of mentality on Facebook recently, in regard to a commercial for the new Ultrabook. Whatever… that’s another story.
      ANYway…
      This sort of story makes me really appreciate the parents I know who do raise their kids right. I hope to Hell that Mark and I can take lessons from Angela & Chris (their three boys are just about the best tweens I’ve met) and Evie & Mike, and all those others I know raising good kids.
      We can do it. Our dog is coming along pretty well, anyway…
      That’s… close, right?

Image “Mother’s Day Present 1” from CynthiaB at SXC.hu