Idiot Wind is Blowing Strong

"Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth/ Blowing down the backroads headin’ south/ Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth/
You’re an idiot, babe/ It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe." - "Idiot Wind" by Bob Dylan

I am outraged! Seriously, I have seen two things in the past few days that make me want to scream, call social services, and punch idiot parents in their stupid faces. What has gotten me so irate? Allow me to explain.

On Friday, I spent a couple of hours at the park with the girls. This is a nice park in one of the more upscale areas of my town. It's not the kind of place where one would expect to see graffiti on the bathroom walls, cigarette butts on the sidewalks, or evidence of teenage liasons left behind that almost certainly would provoke children to ask some very uncomfortable questions. And most of the people who visit this park fit right in with its wholesome feel. Most people. Then there is the family I saw last week. It was a young couple, late teens maybe, and their little boy who looked like he was about three years old. This sweet child that was running around happily, blissfully unaware that he is the offspring of morons, was wearing a t-shirt that had "Future Pimp" scrawled right across the front. Really? Seriously? Why would a parent do that?!

And please don't think that I feel the bad judgement shown by these parents has anything to do with their age. I think that even though most teenagers/young adults are not ready to be parents, there are always exceptions. That's one reason why I wanted to write the Willow Ryan series, with the main character being a teenage mother having and raising a baby on her own. There are some teenagers out there who are mature, responsible, and selfless enough to successfully raise children, and I find them incredibly inspiring. But these people at the playground, they are just idiots. It doesn't matter if you're 15, 30, or 45, dressing your child in a shirt that proclaims to the world that they will grow up to be a man who sells women for sex is a crime. Or at least it should be. And I am appalled that this shirt even exists.

Then today I saw something else that made smoke and fire shoot out of my ears and nostils like some crazed cartoon character. I had just dropped the kids off at school and was driving through a nice part of downtown Norfolk, VA, when I saw a woman walking with a little girl who was probably about four or five. The woman was dressed in a business suit, she was holding the child's hand, and everything seemed so normal they almost didn't even register in my brain. Until I stopped at a red light and looked at the child. On the back of her shirt was the word "Bootylicious", with an arrow pointing down toward her rear end. I was hoping that maybe I was losing my mind, I had forgotten how to read, or maybe I was going blind and didn't see the words clearly, but no, I was right upon taking a second look.

HOW IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?! Who does these things to their children? Part of a parent's job is to protect their kids, and dressing them in clothes that call negative attention to them, sexualize them, and disrepect them and those of us around them who have an ounce of class and decency, does the exact opposite. Why do things like this even happen? Apparently the idiot wind is blowing really strong in my part of the world.