"You're a crybaby"

[Julie]

I'm a huge JfC fan too. 

I'm glad I didn't try walking on water before I saw the f.

[Julie]

Julie, we're becoming myspace friends. 

I can't accept you until I get home from a party I'm going to after I finish working today. But then I will post a comment with a giant picture of Yetta for you.

[Julie]

What if the kid was transgendered?

Would it be an it or would that still be rude?

[Lacey]

I work in a restaurant.  Once, a woman let her 4-year-old perch dangerously on a wobbly chair because the little girl refused a booster seat.  The woman, seated in the booth across from the girl--not even next to her!--asked me to push the girl's chair in.  I wouldn't do it.  I told her straight out that I never involve myself with other people's children in the highly unlikely event that something should happen.
The only exception is when I yanked a little boy out of the way of the swinging kitchen door that was about to nail him.  His parents were letting him run around the place unsupervised.  The swinging door had nailed an older man a few weeks earlier.  That man ended up in the hospital with a concussion.

But unless your kid is about to get maimed by a 400-lb door swinging at 60 mph, I will not get involved at all.

[daveB from Oakland]

In german, a child is neuter.

                               

                               

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I once saved a hippie baby at a Jerry Garcia Band concert at the Spectrum while I was tripping.  The dreadlocked mom was totally distracted, and I sprinted down all of these stadium steps as everything in my peripheral vision melted into a long green tunnel.  I scooped up the kid just as he was climbing over the balcony railing, and made a (probably totally nonsensical joke) to the mom as I handed the kid back to her.



I think the mom was actually really awful, like a seriously bad person.

[Steve in North Hollywood]

What was the joke?

[Steve of Bloomington]

That Dad sucks.  The salesclerk also sucks.  My daughter sometimes does the clingy hiding thing, sometimes decides she spontaneously wants to tell her life story to somebody she's just met.  Depends on her mood I suppose, or maybe kids have extra-sensitive jerk radar.  I would for sure not abide somebody calling her a 'crybaby'.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

What was the joke?

Oh, I don't remember.  But it wasn't, like, creepy or inappropriate, it was more like laughing after a moment of adrenaline - she was just kinda like oh, yeah, whatever, with this air of resentment, as if she was thinking, "listen, you square, don't tell me my 18-month-old-child can't scale a 30-foot-high mezzanine at the Spectrum if he wants."  Maybe she wanted to be rid of the little tyke.

I think the negligent young moms at Dead shows were the real deal-breaker with hippies for me.

[Julie]

Jason Grote, you should have taken the baby and run.

There is a crackhead who left her 4 or 5 year old son with me and some of my neighbors when we were building a community garden. She said she'd be right back and was gone for about 3 hours. She didn't know any of us, either. When she did come back, she ate about half of a pizza. Not once did she try to give her little boy pizza or a drink. (Of course, we fed him while she was gone, but she didn't know.) Someone was going to call the police just before she showed up. I see them walking down the street every now and then, and he has a puppy! She must have felt she wasn't living up to her potential to neglect.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Imagine that?  That kid would be...  let me see...  holy shit, I'd have a 15-year-old now.  Would I have had to raise him as a hippie?

[erechoveraker]

I'm pretty sure hippie law dictates that answer to be yes.

[Julie]

I think the negligent young moms at Dead shows were the real deal-breaker with hippies for me.

I went to a WTO, or something like that, protest one time just because I'd never been to a protest rally. The police were lined up on horses with guns pointed at a small crowd of protesters and at me, although I wasn't even shouting anything. What really bothered me, aside from the police, was that there were a few hippy parents carrying their babies around. Sure, if the cops shot the babies or beat the parents carrying the babies, then the cops really would be assholes and the cause would get a lot of good press. But what kind of parent would risk their child's safety like that? It wasn't a peaceful rally at all and there was no reason to expect it would be. An adult can decide to risk their own life for something, but how dare they risk a life that doesn't belong to them!

[Julie]

Imagine that?  That kid would be...  let me see...  holy shit, I'd have a 15-year-old now.  Would I have had to raise him as a hippie?

You only have to raise him as a hippie if you wanted him to be a football star.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Yeah, that is really horrible.  Though I do know very good parents who bring their kids to marches and rallies - these days, though, all the cops have to do is say that they really like the nice law-abiding protesters but anarchists are ruining it for everybody, and then here comes the tear gas.  That said, though, these people would probably recognize if things were going to get ugly from way off, and get their kids out of harms' way before it happened.