By Pure Accident...

I was cleaning my work computer up before the much needed replacement comes in,and I came across the following, oddly enough, by pure accident. Seems I was having a "PC-Parents are Idiots" day. Enjoy. Or don't. I'm having a "Don't give a toot" day, so there.... No, wait; I lied. Please enjoy it and comment and pretend like once again I haven't traded all my creativity in for a hefty paycheck and a 9 to 5 exceuse to wear clothes that don't fall under the PJ category.

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June 13th, 2007

By pure accident, I heard something interestingly disturbing this morning on the radio, the kind of disturbing that can make you question everything you went through as a child, every trial, every goal met and exceeded and failed miserably, every time your sister made you eat a quarter…

One of the morning DJs talked about a recent kid’s recital. Now, the term recital makes me assume it’s your basic childhood competition where there’s a first, a second, a third, and hopefully a bunch of other young, impressionable people motivated enough to try a little harder next time. In this instance, hopefully is where things fall miserably, despressingly, pathetically short.

It seems that right next to the picture station was a table laden with additional trophies…for sale… I’m not talking Honorable Mention ribbons with just enough Hoorah! to get them dreaming of excelling. I’m talking about actual, frickin’ trophies for sale so parents can make their kids feel good, even the ones who don’t deserve it. All children deserve praise, but aren’t you just belittling the handful of children that actually excelled at something, who worked their little (or possibly chunky) keisters off for a shiny bit of Better-than-You?

What kind of message does this teach?

Presenter: I’m sorry, Timmy; you really, really suck. You obviously didn’t practice and spent all of the competition trying to shove your flute up Williams’ butt.

Parental Idiot: How dare you?!? My son is a genius. Here you go, Timmy-sweety-peety,tweety-poo; here’s a trophy anyway. It says Mommy’s Little Pussy-Wussy, and is much better than what that mean old man was giving away to those loser children with nothing better to do than practice.

Lucky-Ass Timmy: You mean I didn’t even try, and in fact I went out of my way to just make it look like I gave a rat’s ass, even going so far as to smuggle a high school band nerd into my room in the evenings and have him play in exchange for sexual favors and pictures of dad in the shower, and I get a trophy? I could have been whacking off and violating the neighbor’s parakeet? This is sweet! Screw effort!