The Serving Bowl for One
On the occasion of our end of summer family get together I walked into my mother’s house to see my grandchildren on the living room floor. The youngest, a girl, playing, the oldest, a three-year old boy, standing over the potato chip serving bowl and feasting away. He turned and looked at me, smiling, and inviting me in soft shy tones to join him. This 40 pound kid was killing that family-sized bag of chips. His sister was using toys to simulate child rearing. Most of the adults were staring vacantly into their electronic devices or using alcohol to deaden the pain of existence. Who, I thought, really has their act together in this crowd? That’s right, the kids.
I grabbed a beer and sat across from him as he inspected chips, one by one, approved them for elderly consumption, and passed them along to me: two for me, one for Pap, three for me, one for Pap, four for me one for Pap, and so on. Before long some busy-body adult male who was courting a female member of the family interceded on behalf of the greater busybody society, and admonished my flesh and blood to save room for more nutritional food.
My grandson looked at me questioningly, so I answered, “Sorry Buddy, I know how important nutrition is, and I should have clued you in early. You see the bottom of the bowl? That is where the vitamins and minerals collect. We need to make sure we sop that oily nutrition up before these grownups start piling their tasteless conscience on our plate!”
He smiled at me like Dennis the Menace and grabbed some crumbs, much to the horror of the busybody grownup who said, “Jimmy how could you! No! There is too much sodium in that!”
I waived him off and looked to my grandson, “Sodium is grownup guilt-speak for salt. Salt is so important that Tibetan nomads travel great distances to barter for salt for their yaks. In the Neolithic period it was the most common form of money. Salt also makes beer taste better and is an important ingredient in chocolate milk—and we all know how important chocolate milk is!”
He smiled again, and the busybody stood up in a huff and shook his head, drawing the attention of my son. I then patted my grandson on the head and looked at his father, “Don’t worry buddy, as long as you’re hanging with me you can break all those lame grownup rules. I outrank everyone here except my Mom and she’s busy in the kitchen. I have supper seniority and the other grownups can’t make me mind.”
My son agreed in his deep fatherly tone, “That’s right Trav, Pap can do what he wants.”
Trav then smiled at both of us, and my son continued as the busy body went for a piece of fruit in the kitchen, “So Pap, what is the best thing about being about being a grownup?”
I smiled at Trav and declared, “The same thing that would be the best thing about being a kid if only parents minded their own business—chocolate milk any time I want it!”
Author’s Note
I have had various adults, impressed with my knowledge of history and my love of children, suggest I teach school. I have only been able to consider this as a tragic-comedy sci-fi story about an old crackpot blowing the lid off of the entire douche-bag adult conspiracy against children, and offering a blueprint for subversive self-cultivation for the militant child. I can see no other end to my teaching career than being dragged out of class by school cops, and have postulated no more than a week of tolerance for my presence.
So, what would I teach 35 random kids? I have outlined this as an article and come to the conclusion that I would attempt to make it a week as a teacher—a mere week to instill an ‘operationally defiant conscience’ in these children, in hopes that they might be able to handle their parents better than their parents would probably handle them. This has simply gotten too big for an article. I am placing it on my nonfiction list of books-to-write.
Why Grownups Suck is intended for a child between 10-12 years of age. The idea is to catch them at maximum intelligence before the downward spiral into our crazed version of semi-adulthood that is adolescence. In the meantime, if you can think of anything that you, as a child of about that age—an awakening pre-teen—thought was wrong with the grownup world in general, please leave a post below, so I might include it in my lesson plan.
Contents
1. A Lesson Plan to Incite Militant Child Evolution
2. Hello Kids, I’m the Kid That Got Away
3. Ducking the Teenage Zombie Apocalypse
4. Grownups are Violent, Which is the Main Reason They Suck for You
5. Teachers, and the How and Why of the Grownup Lie
6. Grownups Steal: Theft as the Basis for Grownup Society
7. Why Grownups are Insane, and the Grim Plight of Teenage Crazies
8. Grownups are Stupid, What That Means to You, and How to Use It
9. Super Grownups Suck Even More, and How to Avoid Them
10. The Fact that You Are Property Sucks Even More Than Grownups, and How to Minimize the Suckiness of That
11. Pitting Grownups Against Each Other: An Action Plan
12. The League of Really Old Kids and You
Grownups are terrible because their lives are miserable. A soul-crushing job, taxes, and a metabolism that has screeched to a halt are all depressing things. If an adult doesn't have any real authority they can abuse and vent their frustration with, they create an imagined authority over children and young adults (I can think of a few high school teachers from my past). I would say the only way to save yourself would be to indulge in a Peter Pan Complex to some extent, though I'm guessing that is the point of your book.
The only problem I would add to your current list of contents is that school is a glorified daycare, but that might fall under category five or eight.
That was quite helpful.
I have decided to write this as a novella from the perspective of various students concerning a teacher using this outline as a week long lesson plan. I will use a fictional name for the young lady who has decided on the Peter Pan solution [Jamira maybe] and finds herself a member of his ill-fated class...
Thanks.