Tue 5 Dec 2006
When I was younger, I thought Adult Cindy would…
1.) never tire of running to a ringing phone to see who might be calling;
2.) never be boring like Mom and Dad and order duck designs on checks;
3.) not be one of those meanie grownups who dislike children.
I think I may be wrong on all three accounts. The first, because I find myself laying listless sometimes as the phone rings, and I’m thinking, “There can’t be anyone calling who’s important or interesting enough that’ll make it worthwhile for me to get up right now.” The second, because I just wrote a standard designless checkered background check to pay my cell phone bill and not only is this the first set of checks I’ve had (since the first book of free checks you get for opening the account) that’s not some cool or cute personalized design, but I don’t even care that this check is boring and doesn’t say a thing about me, because it’s free. (I had a bad experience with ordering specialty checks that has now convinced me to be content with the bank’s free and hassle-free ones, boring as they are. You can read about the bad experience here and the update here.) The third, I’m not really sure about; people like Jordan, Dwaine and my gym trainee have said that it’s not that I don’t like kids per se, I just dislike unruly undisciplined kids in public. That may be true, because this past weekend I met a little toddler girl who’s well-behaved, quiet, and happy. She melted my heart. Mr. W and I had gone over to his kids’ mom’s house to pick the kids up, and mom’s sister was there with her toddler. The little girl was playing on the stairs, so Mr. W walked up and picked her up lest she fall to her death. Bringing her down, he walked toward me and I reached out a finger to the little curly-haired girl and said, “Hi!” She actually stretched out her open hands and arms toward me, and leaned toward me. “Awww!” I said as I took her from him. She giggled at me.
So what kind of expectations did you guys have of your grownup selves when you were kids? Did they come true?
By the way, the outside checks people never straightened out the problem, never sent the SASE they said they would to reclaim the erroneous checks, and never corrected my order.
I used to get stupid checks with stupid designs.. but now I get regular checks with just a fancy letter for the first letter in my last name. heh.
I used to think I’d ALWAYS like kids…
well now I’m growing less tolerant of the crying toddler in the restaurant.. or movie theatre… or anywhere in public.
I’m evil.
Well you know about my Predators checks–they were free from the bank though.
I never thought I’d have kids…and I don’t. I agree about unruly kids in public. Annoying!!
I thought I’d be living out west (Colorado/Wyoming). It didn’t come true and probably won’t.
As a kid I used to think when I became an adult technology would be so advance that I would have robots to clean and do work and I could sit back and relax. I had high hopes for mankind.
I think we’re pioneers in a new anti-kid generation. Heh. Vanessa, you got hooked on “The Jetsons” too, huh? When I was 6 my grandma told me when I was old enough to drive, I wouldn’t be driving a car, I’d be flying a plane to work.
Funny thing is I used to like kids when I was a kid. Now I’m not so warm on that idea. I’m actually afraid to hold babies for fear I’d break them. And crazy unruly kids is like birth control. I’ve seen too many, though my neice and nephew are great kids.
Isn’t it funny how we all think kids these days are awful in general but the ones close to us are the exceptions?
the exception to me is ANY behaved child… I just can’t STAND disruption and bad behavior…
I totally believe my neice and nephew came out so well was because my sister ruled them with an iron fist. She can get pretty scary when she needs to drop the hammer. I was under the hammer a few times myself when I was young.
Every adult with their head on straight that I’ve spoken to about this have said that their parents would corporally punish them when they misbehaved, and altho it was scary as a kid, all of us are grateful we were loved enough to be set straight so harshly and definitively as children.
I was watching a T.V. show while I was at the gym last night. They set up a hidden camera crew in a restaurant and then hired 3 actors — 2 young kids and a “dad” to sit in the restaurant. The kids were told to be terrors / scream / yell / throw things and ignore anything anyone said. And boy they sure did it! The dad was told to get on his cellphone and just ignore the kids completely.
Throughout the whole ordeal you can clearly see that people around them were annoyed / pissed / gossiping about the kids. But NONE of the adults would say anything to the dad about the kids. NO one complained! It was amazing. They sat through an HOUR of these kids screaming / yelling / running around the restaurant throwing stuff, playing KAZOOS, etc! And no one complained.
Finally at the end of the show they showed a young girl maybe around 8 who was clearly REALLY getting annoyed about the kids. She kept telling her mom to do something, or that she WOULD say something. But her mom was embarassed and tried to keep her daughter from confronting the terror kids. Eventually she just got sick of it, stared right at the terror kids and said something like “STOP IT!!! RIGHT NOW!” To the kid playing the kazoo. And she was so authoratative about it the kid with the Kazaoo actually stopped! (Remember they were told to ignore anything anyone said!).
It was too funny that this little girl was able to shut the kids down whereas no one else spoke up.
Maybe that’s why these days parents let their kids run around being terrors. Because not many people actually complain.
You went to the gym last nite?! I feel like such a slacker. I only worked out at lunch yesterday.
No, take a look when I posted it! 🙂 Referencing to today, I went to the gym 2 nights ago.
I didn’t go to the gym last night cuz someone was all sleepy!!