Your Kids Make You Retarded

  Firstly, the new Rush album Clockwork Angels is due out next week, and it's been leaked onto YouTube.  There's no concern though, I of course will buy it so I won't affect sales.  It's very progressive like the way they used to be in the mid-'70s in the same way Emerson, Lake and Palmer's triumphant 1972 release of Tarkus is progressive (which interestingly ranked #9 in the Billboard Top 200 and #1 in the UK at the time, yeah, your parents were probably "banging" to this, because A Passion Play was #3 the next summer by Jethro Tull.. this was what was on the radio at the time!  Frack Lady Gaga!  To hell with Linkin' Park!  THIS was what it was all about, and Elvis can choke on his own b'cawk.)
  Update*  The link was just taken down after only being up for 2 hours.  Still, you can hear the song Carnies on my hidden website page here:  MikeCronis.com Hidden Page.

  So there I am at work, minding my own business when someone started talking about kids.  It's a common subject I'm bored to death about.  I mentioned that people stop learning when they have kids.  They stop growing as people.  I was countered with the argument that no, this is not the case, and in fact you start growing as a person.  I insisted on an example, because most people I know who have kids were so burned-out and glazed-over in their eyes and all their hobbies stopped and life became all about their kids.  He explained that you watch how they grow cognitively and then you learn about yourself that way.  I was unimpressed. 

  I watched a lot of Sesame Street and other child-developmental shows when I was young, and then again when I was in my early 20s to understand child development.  So fascinated I was about it that I spent many years afterwards watching the hidden subtext of cognitive learning and techniques by use of color selection, sound selection and childrens' responses.  It was very intriguing on all media levels.  I explained this and insisted on an example that I might have missed since he said actually having kids makes it more poignant.
  He gave an anecdote of how his kid had a Buzz Lightyear (of the Pixar film Toy Story) doll and after several months got on top of the couch and jumped off it, holding the doll high.  His eyes gleamed in delight.  The other child-owner in the discussion also was delighted by this, "See how you learn by this?"

  Babies are stupid and learn by trial-and-error usually.  No duh.

  I was disgusted.  That was not a very good example.  Indeed, it seems rather retarded, but it was obvious the child assumed he could possibly fly if he held Buzz up high and jumped, or perhaps he was using imagination to show flight for the toy.  Either way.  No big deal.  Rather dull.  Who hasn't done something like that?  I admitted to him it was pretty uninteresting.
  He argued that when you're a teacher, you learn more from your students than not.  I've always found this not the case and said so, because I research the HELL out of something before I teach it.  Rarely did I ever have to dig something up beforehand to the students.  I prepared for it early-on and did my job properly.  He then countered I was not a very good teacher then, though I neglected to tell him all of my students scored a grade of "A" in my entire career in the USAF because of my good teaching of whom some were real stumps.  So proud I am of that fact that it's on my resume.  I, my friends, am an expert teacher.
   I'm still pissed-off about his slight though.  I doubt I'll ever forgive him for it.  He also said several months earlier that I don't love cars by way of argument that I have no shitty ones which might be cool in aesthetic purposes; however I must confess I take such good care of my vehicles that I go as far as change the oil twice as often as I should and when detailing with Q-Tips actually wax the underside of my hood and the engine components.  I've used bottled water to rinse off my car in North Dakota because the water was too hard with minerals.  He, on the other hand hasn't washed his beat-up shit-cars in months and takes his vehicles in annually to trust the dealership to do their maintenance.  One car is missing a dashboard for the last year and has mismatched seats from another car in it.  None of the cars have ever seen wax.  I love my vehicles so much I don't trust dealerships to do any work on them and if I'm stuck having to go to a dealership I insist on waiting in the garage and watch them work on it, verifying torque settings on the wrenches and what-not.  I'm sure I'm a PITA for them but.. ah yes, I don't love cars.

  You see, people have kids and the majority (yeah, not all) give up a lot of their life to live for their kids.  A glaze goes over their eyes of happiness and they forget that they don't have a life any more.  They're just in joy of the kid.  Fine fine, but it's a bit sad.  The kid is almost always unimpressed with this and will rebel in their teens regardless and be ungrateful.  Guaranteed.  Inevitable to some degree.  It's the Way of Life.  In my opinion, the parents act retarded over this.  They love it.  They love thinking they're learning something when, no, you're not, unless you are super-dumb and had no passion for investigation.  The Internet was the best thing that ever happened to me for that hobby, gleaning all sorts of goodies making my thirst for trivia satiated.  I enjoy learning new things on my own.  It's fun.  When a parent thinks their kid is the shit, they usually are wrong.  No one gives a shit about your kid except you.  Even your kid doesn't give a shit that you care that much.  They don't require or want that much attention.  Some is good, sure, but doting, gushing?  Nope.  I found that about girlfriends too.  38 Special helped with the song Hold on Loosely.  Good wisdom there.  Parents get so involved with the kid's doing things that they become brain-dead about it with glee.  By 16 the kid has moved-on mentally while the parent's brain has regressed into mush and can't go back to normal.  The parent loves the kid so much that in a few years of birth, the stay-at-home parent becomes a mental-case and is happy to watch pre-kindergarten TV all day and talk baby-talk all day long until, well, they become to the same mental level as the kid a bit.  When they snap out of it, that rubber-band of sanity doesn't have the same tensity, and you never make it back all the way day after day until.  Zombie-time, and your kids resent it, and you're done.

  It's not the kids that make you complete.  It's your passion for life, and admiring them dosen't improve you except for your capacity for compassion.  The secret lies elsewhere.  Find it.

  So if you have to have kids, keep your wits about you, or try to.  The Earth doesn't need any more humans, and you're not doing anyone a favor by having them, but it's fine if you have kids.  Try not to have too many, because no, you're not that important.  If your IQ is over 140 or you're a super-athlete which later can become a slave working-class creature then fine.  Screw away.