Child is Father to the Man, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

June 13, 2009 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

Since I am, by choice, a dirty hippie Commie peace freak, many people assume i would be a permissive parent.  This is not true.  Two incidents that recently befell me (and, I’d imagine, millions of other people) illustrate why.
1.  My husband and I went to see Up, the new Pixar film.  We’re both avid animation fans, and have loved Pixar’s work since we first saw the short, Luxo Junior back in the mid-1980s.  We went to a mid-afternoon weekday show at a movie theater downtown, because we’re old and can’t stay up late, and it’s always deserted there.

This show was not completely empty.  There were about twenty people there, mostly adults, but a few people with children.

Usually, Pixar films are so compelling that children watch them with rapt attention.  In this case, however, there were two kids who were three years old or younger.  They talked, in loud voices.  One talked through the entire movie.  The other was so frightened that he made his father leave halfway through.

The other one kept yacking, however.  He wasn’t responding to scenes in the movie; instead, he was asking for popcorn, or ice cream, or a soda.  Loudly.

Here’s the thing.  When my son was little, we didn’t take him to the movies until he was old enough to sit through them without interrupting.  We taught him that a movie was a treat for people grown-up enough to behave.  We practiced at home, with videos.  When we got to the movie theater, for that first time when he was five and every time after that, I would say, “Remember, the other people here spent their money to see the movie, not to listen to us talk.  If you have something you need to tell me, whisper it in my ear.”

Please note I’m not complaining about reactions to the movie itself.  Laughter, shrieks, and other responses are fun.  However, I really resent it when people read sub-titles out loud, or repeat lines of dialogue over and over.
Some people think that movies for children do not demand the same courtesy from an audience as do movies with more mature themes.  I disagree.  Children are entitled to the same respect as all other kinds of audiences.

And why would you bring a three year old to a movie in any case?  What is there about a movie theater experience that is special to a child that young?  I’m sure the kids saw the commercials and wanted to go, but why couldn’t the parents say, “No?”  Up will undoubtedly be available on DVD before Christmas.  Let them wait.

Instead of setting limits for their children, these parents ruined the movie for other people, and taught their kids, through their actions, not to be concerned with the feelings of others.  Which leads me to my next example.

2.  On sunny Sundays, I like to roller-blade on Hudson Park.  This park winds along the west side of Manhattan from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge (although I don’t roller-blade anywhere near the entire distance).  It’s long and narrow, with seating, tennis courts, basketball courts, half-pipes for skateboarders, and lots more.  At this time of year, it’s especially wonderful because the rose bushes, all along the various median strips, are in fragrant bloom.

Why are there median strips?  The entire park (except where work is being done) has parallel jogging and bike paths.  Signs indicate that the path closest to the water is for runners and walkers; the path slightly to the east is for bikers and skaters.  And yet, every weekend, no matter what the time I go, there are runners in the bike lane.

I don’t know what these people are thinking.  Perhaps they think that they are so fleet of foot that they could be on wheels.  Certainly, some of them are faster than I am.  However, this isn’t really the point.  They are in my space.

I’m not saying this because I’m a greedy bitch.  I am, but that’s not the point.  I go slowly for a reason – I’m not good at stopping.  I skate on the bike path because it’s a place where I’m not a danger to people in cars or pedestrians.  Runners, for the most part, can stop without dragging a foot with a brake pedal.  I can’t.  Runners – especially those that run together, talking or listening to music, not paying attention to their surroundings – frequently change directions or stop abruptly.

In the past, I’ve sometimes said something to these runners.  For the most part, they look at me blankly.  Once, someone insisted that, since it was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, the rules did not apply.

Certainly, they believed, the rules did not apply to them.

I’m not a stickler for rules just because they’re rules.  If anything, I believe in civil disobedience.  The only just response to a bad law is to break the law.

Having said that, I’m a rabid political proponent of good manners.  At their core, good manners require us to consider the feelings of other people, and act as if their feelings are important.

Parents who let their toddler decide what movie to see, and how to behave in the theater, are not teaching their child good manners.  They are instead, by example, teaching their children that the world revolves around them.  These are children who grows up to think that bike lanes are for bikes, and jogging lanes for joggers, except for them, who can take up as much space as they like, wherever they like.  And this is how we get bankers who think they deserve huge bonuses when they run a company into so much debt that the government has to bail them out.

Instead, I chose to teach my son the importance of empathy.  This is a character trait I appreciate in a dinner companion, a telephone operator, and a Supreme Court Justice.

Another dirty hippie once observed that, to live outside the law, you must be honest.

—
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, doesn’t care what forks you use.