Parents

What the hell is it with parents today?

The woman that lives next door, very pleasant in most regards, has a 10 year old son. The dad is not in the kid's life much, not that that matters.

Now, get this: The kid WANTS to mow the lawn. He enjoys it. And he does a pretty decent job... I've had him mow the yard here, and for $10 he mows, sweeps the clippings from the walk, and puts the mower back in the shed. He will come over and ASK me "Do you need your yard mowed?" A budding business man, at 10 years old.

She, however, hires a lawn service to do her lawn, rather than let her kid mow it.

And her reasoning?

"I don't want him to think he's only good for manual labor. I would rather he spend his time reading, listening to different styles of music, and learning about the arts than doing menial physical labor."

*blink blink*

I mowed the lawn as a kid. It was not only encouraged, but EXPECTED. "You want dinner? Best get the lawn done, then." I didn't much care for it, and instead wanted to go play with my buddies Dean and Eddie, but what I wanted didn't factor into the equation.

Now, however, we've got warm/fuzzy feel-good loonies that don't want their children to learn anything that resembles a work ethic, and instead teach them it's more important to listen to Erykah Badu and look at "Starry Night."

Raising a generation of pansies, we are.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot., over?