Your Kid's A Piece Of Shit

There's this neighbor kid who comes around hauling around a cat. He's a cute kid, probably's going to get in a TON of trouble when he gets older, as he openly talks to people. He's only about 7 or 8. Probably lonely. I've seen his slightly older sister around. She seems more interested in NOT having to deal with this kid. He scuttles around my complex. Hauling a cat. I sit on my stoop sometimes and wonder where his parents are. One day a FAT motherfucker came over. He was pleasant. Had that fat guy walk. With fat guy breathing. He was looking for his kid. The kid who hauled around a cat. The conversation was quiet. No apologies for his cat hauling kid chatting me up, when I'm clearly a older guy smoking a pipe and reading a book.

At some point a thought occurred to me. What if...at some moment I said to him "listen, your kid's a piece of shit. Get him under control or he's going to be out of control." Man, not only would his fat face turn beet red, he'd sit on my sorry ass and pound it into the ground. Forget assessing that maybe he'd been a shitty parent. Or whatever. Because society seems to have it in their mind that kids are raised by community. For the most part, I agree with that. But that contract doesn't extend to punishment. The worst offenders seem to be the ones who will never believe their children can do wrong. That baffles me. IF your child is acting shitty, call them out. Logic right? Wrong. We've mixed it up bad that for someone to point out your child's behavior triggers the narcissist in us. They're saying WE'RE shitty people. And then they turn it against the criticizer. "Yeah, lookit' your dumbass. You drink alone like some scumbag, who are you to judge?" Yet, they never consider that if their shitty kid did anything wrong, they aren't held responsible. Shrug, put hands up. I wish I could do that in criminal court.