Show Us Your Righteous Indignation

I have taken to taking the Prawn out for afternoon strolls in her buggy. I was once led to believe that small babies are quite passive and happy to stay where they are put, gleaning information from the world around them, ready to impart what they have learned in a philosophical treatise entitled, “Mama, Dada and Doggie: Nouns, Caregivers and Face-lickers” when they turn 9 months old or so. However, I found that I was much mistaken. The Prawn is BORED and lets us know by telling us, “ATTENTION PARENTAL UNITS. STIMULATE MY BRAIN OR FEEL MY WRAAAAAAAAAAATH!!” Hence, the daily change of scenery.

Yesterday, as I made my way up the sidewalk with the Prawn, a boy, on the unchanged voice side of puberty shouted out a window of a taxi at me, urging me to display a set of familiar female body parts.

There are many things that one thinks of saying long after a speeding car with a rude pre-pubescent wank-pot in it has disappeared, (i.e. “I would but you wouldn’t know what to do with them.”, “Come back when your balls drop”, etc) but nothing really covers the disgust that one feels when hearing something like that out of the mouth of a child while you yourself are pushing your 3 month old daughter up the street in her buggy. Having been to college in a small midwestern town with a high pick up truck/population ratio, I have experienced this phenominon on many occasions, but almost always from the person who was DRIVING the truck rather than someone who should be strapped into a booster seat in the back.

It got me thinking, on the rest of my stroll (The Prawn, who is supposed to BENEFIT from the change of scenery, fell fast asleep and when we returned home looked at me reproachfully as if to say, “Weren’t we going to GO somewhere, you lazy wench?”) about the whole nature vs. nurture argument. It’s fairly obvious to me that one can’t rely on either one or the other to completely shape a child, although either can limit the extent of his or her horizons. Children obviously aren’t BORN with a need to behave like utter asshats- asshattery is a learned skill. In the case of my squeaky friend, my guess is that he’s heard such phrases from his father or older brother with startling regularity. Obviously, I began composing an open letter in my head that I would dearly like to stick on the village notice board.

To the caregivers of the vile whelp who verbally assaulted me on Marsworth Road, 6th of June, 2007,

If you will pardon my tone, just what in the name of holy hell are you doing in that home of yours that makes your ignorant man-cub think that it’s okay to shout “show us your tits!” to a lone woman pushing a baby buggy up the road?

You are clearly inbreds and should be locked in public stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes at earliest convenience.

Love and kisses,

Rockmama