Day Five: Father – Son Tradition, Ricky Bobby’s and Be Be’s Kids Have Gone Wild
Another morning where I just wanted to stay in bed. I did not want to move. I found my lazy spot and it was good.
There was a lot of tossing and turning going on in our room last night. I think Naeem and I both were still a bit traumatized by our time on the plantation. At one point during the night, I noticed Naeem in a position like someone trying to run away. I mean he was literally positioned on his side like he was awaiting a gun to be fired indicating the start of a race.
I wondered if driving through the plantation – which in some places felt like a scene out of 1997 movie Rosewood – had him imagining that he was one of his ancestors trying to find his way to freedom. I know the plantation affected me. I am always bothered when I stand on the ground where my ancestors’ blood, sweat and tears toiled, fertilized and soiled the land.
America Needs a National Parenting Czar
Speaking of disturbed, our sleep pattern over the last several days have been messed up. Throughout each of the last couple nights and early mornings, we have been awakened by inhospitable guests. From the wee hour running up and down the halls to the opening and slamming of doors, some of the adult guests – not just the children – have been genuinely unbearable. But in the early morning, the evil spawns of the inhospitable parents have been equally wayward.
Over the last several days, I have made some observations which for me have reinforced the truth behind the idiom “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. Many of the misbehaving kids were being parented – I’m not sure parenting is an accurate phrase – by let’s call them unruly DNA Donors. I kid you not, some of the things we saw from Ricky and Carley Bobby’s kids and let’s not forget Be Be’s kids would make even Dr. Lipschitz consider giving up his child psychology practice.
http://youtu.be/jwsp6A4WUbU
http://youtu.be/CCW7ztmWvbQ
Tattoo Dad
Look, I’m no prude. I believe people should have the right to do whatever they want to do with their own body – after all it is their body. So if you want to get piercings, tattoos or whatever it’s absolutely cool with me. As long as you aren’t harming anyone else in the process, I say “Do your thing”!
I offer the ensuing framework to assure you that when I say “do your thing”, I really mean “do your thing”. I am such a proponent of individual freedoms that I joined a fraternity where a great number of my fraternity brothers elected to be branded. I am not one of the branded members but many of the men who I greatly respect have been branded. One of my favorite NBA players is Chris “Birdman” Anderson. Birdman might be the most tattooed athlete in sports.
Okay, I get it – I should stop protesting now. He who doth protest too much. I get it, I’m starting to sound like the racists who says that he isn’t a racists by saying “you know one of my good friends is Black“.
Just one more time for the record, I really do believe in personal freedoms – doing your thing. However, I just don’t believe that “do your thing” should include tattooing your child so that they look like you.
Yesterday, we saw a child no older than four with tattoos on his arm that matched his father. I thought Naeem was Mini-Me but this father and son had us beat by a mile. There was not just one inconspicuous tattoo, the child’s entire right arm was tattooed like his fathers. I know the father was able to exercise his individual freedoms but I wonder did the father rob his son of the same liberty by tattooing the arm of his child?
http://youtu.be/wBE3SwpBIL8
Scratching and Tugging Dad
Not ten minutes had passed between the time we witnessed the boy with his daddy’s tattoo when we saw the public scratching and tugging by a father and son. I can’t tell you exactly what the father and son were scratching and tugging in public. This is a G-rated blog. Yet, I am sure that you are smart enough to know the body part which is not acceptable for a male to scratch and tug in public.
Apparently, neither this father nor son had received this social norm notification. 
The father was scratching and tugging on himself near the public rocking chairs while his son scratched and tugged at himself in the playground with all the other pre-school age children.
During the scratching and tugging ceremony, a woman spoke – I assumed her to be the wife and mother. She commented “there he goes scratching and tugging on himself again, he always does that”. I so wanted to ask, “which ‘He’ are you talking about the father or the son”?
Home Alone
Have you ever watched Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin? It is one of my all-time favorite movies. I don’t know what it is about the movie but it always tugs at my heart (nothing like the scratching and tugging of the previously mentioned father and son).
Slow your roll, now I didn’t say that the movie brought me to tears; it just makes me a little emotional. Okay, maybe there is a sniffle or two and some mist in my eye but that’s as far as I will go.
Please, enough about the movie already. What I was trying to explain to you before you got on this tangent about me being sentimental was that Naeem and I witnessed more than one Kevin McCallister today. In fact, we saw enough small children leaving their hotel room, entering elevators and roaming the resorts unaccompanied that Twentieth Century Fox could write scripts for Home Alone 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
I just don’t get it. We live in a nation where approximately 800,000 children younger than 18 are reported missing annually. Yet, despite the alarming number of abductions and the likelihood that an unaccompanied child could become an additional unfortunate statistic to the growing numbers of missing and exploited children – “parents” leave their children alone in potentially perilous situations.
Caring for a child is not a movie set, its real life with real life implications. I only wish more people spent as much time planning to parent as they do planning the next vacation.
Emily Post Would Be Mortified
There was once a time when young men knew the proper time to wear a hat. More importantly, there was a time when father’s instructed their son’s on the ways of respect and honor. One such example of respect and honor use to be removing your hat when you were inside a building.
I can remember more than once being reprimanded for not removing my hat fast enough when I entered someone’s home, a restaurant, school and when the national anthem was being played. Not only was I verbally reprimanded, I was slapped upside the head to expedite my slow memory.
Now listen, I am not suggesting that children need the type of physical reminders that were common in my day. What I experienced back in the day, would qualify as child abuse today. It is my preference that no child is abused and all parents avoid time in jail. Child abuse does a disservice to everyone the victim, the perpetrator, the family and the community.
What I am suggesting is that children, specifically young men – in the case of wearing hats – should be trained to understand when a hat should be removed. Plain and simple. Fathers have to do a better job raising men who understand the importance of doing what are considered the small things in a major way. In order for son’s to appreciate some of these rules of etiquette, fathers have to set examples of good manners and etiquette.
Sadly, today, at breakfast, I saw too many fathers who must have missed out on some of the old school incentives that I received. Fathers wearing hats at breakfast and sons wearing hats. Fathers wearing baseball caps and son’s wearing visors. Breakfast was a portrayal of anything you can do I can do better. Or in this revocation of good manners – a depiction of anything you can do I can do equally poorly.
I Want to Ride My Bicycle
Some of the bicycle riding that we witnessed over the past several days has been about as outrageous and offensive as the English rock band Queen’s video to the aptly titled song Bicycle Race from their 1978 album Jazz. Today’s bicycle riding encounters were no different.
I bet when you think of outrageous and offensive bike riding you imagine children riding recklessly, weaving in and out of track, popping wheelies, jumping ramps and in general riding as if they were auditioning for the next X Games. If that is what you were envisioning, you would be wrong.
Most often, the offensive bike riders who literally crossed our path – the path of our car in oncoming traffic – were not adrenaline immortality believing junkies. Instead, the bike riders were “irresponsible bicycling allegedly risk averse parents”.
Yet, more than just being irresponsible and rude, these parents were out each day routinely endangering their lives and the lives of their children. The examples are too numerous to name them all but I will share a few with you:
- Father weaving and swerving through cars stopped at a light while his elementary aged children weaved, swerved and wobbled unstably in between cars trying to keep up with their father. Neither he nor his children were wearing bike helmets.
- Father riding with his elementary aged daughter seated sideways across the bar as he teeter tottered down the bike path. Neither he nor his daughter were wearing bike helmets.
- Mother and father riding bikes with their children and pulling the youngest in a bike trailer. No member of the family was wearing bike helmets and they were all weaving and bobbing in and out of the bike lane.
If just one of the children in the aforementioned examples was hit by a driver there would have been potential for a national debate about drivers respecting bicyclers. What Naeem and I witnessed suggests that there is reason to be outraged and for a call of national debate. But the summit should not bring parents, community leaders and politicians together to discuss bicycles and cars, it should be to convene about devising standards for responsible parenting.
http://youtu.be/GJsoaR8ArDg
It Really is Yummy
Having had our fill of the parental exploits of Ricky and Carley Bobby, Naeem and I decided to venture off the resort for dinner. Having no idea where to eat, we Googled vegetarian restaurants and found a listing for a place named Yummy House. We figured with a name like Yummy House it had to be good.
We remain convinced of the quality of food served by Yummy House long enough to drive to its location. Once we pulled up in the parking lot, we had real doubt that Yummy House was yummy at all. What was once excitement about having dinner away from the resort, turned into great apprehension once we parked the car and started walking toward the building.
We walked inside and the waitress offered us a seat. Without saying it, I believe that neither of us wanted to take a seat anywhere other than back in the car. Yummy House looked more like Crummy House and we expected the food to be yucky.
I said to Naeem, “hey we can give it a try or we can go; I’m good either way”. Surprisingly, he said “we are here so let’s go ahead and try it as long as we can go somewhere else if it tastes bad”. I agreed to his proposal so we ordered.
In short, the food was great. The meal was absolutely yummy. Yummy House, although looking like Yucky Shack, lived up to its name and served us a meal that went well beyond our expectations.
Naeem said to me, “I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover”. Another valuable lesson cemented in the mind of my son. A mouth-watering meal served with a side of delightful conversation and lip smacking perspective.
And Then There Was Be Be
While we are on the topic of smacking lips… Nah, I can’t tell you the whole sad story. Nope, I don’t have the energy or heart to tell you about Be Be and her three kids who were also smacking their lips and chewing with their mouths open at the Yummy House. What little ambiance the Yummy House could have offered was destroyed literally and figuratively by Be Be and kin.
From not expecting to pay for her kids meals to protesting that she thought her kids should eat free to leaving her infant alone while she took one of her other two children to the bathroom to allowing her two pre-school age kids to roam the restaurant while she went to the bathroom to yelling and screaming at her kids as they ran around the restaurant to her kids pulling apart pieces of the interior structure of the building, Be Be and her kids left the proprietor informing her “you don’t have to go home Be Be but you and your kids have to get the H-E double hockey sticks out of here”!
Watching Be Be and her kids in action, Naeem and I decided to get out of the Yummy House as well. We didn’t go because the food wasn’t good or like Be Be, we were asked to leave. We wanted to leave before Be Be and her kids started tearing up our rental car or worse asked us if we could give them a ride back to the hotel so that they could go hang out with Ricky and Carley Bobby’s kids.
Would somebody please do something about parents!
http://youtu.be/QmqphjqWyd4
Are you setting an example of responsible or irresponsible parenting? Will your children be the red shining apple that fell from your tree or the rotten quickly decaying apple that no one wants to have anything to do with?