Sunday, November 19, 2017

Entitled Parents in a Crowd

Lovely concert at the Unitarian Church, South Church, Saturday night. 
Voices, a 200 woman chorus put on their holiday event, with some soloists who were quite astonishing, four women each a solo, two professional and two who could be, singing against the backing of 200 voices. 
The chorus hired sound professionals to record it in the church, which has great acoustics, but they could not do this.

No C.D. from that concert because two twenty something parents each decided to bring his infant to the concert, and in every pause, the howling, mewling of an infant intruded.

W.C. Fields remarked a man could not be all bad if he hated children and dogs. I do not hate children or dogs, but I was ready to throttle each of these two fathers, who not only brought their infants to the concert but remained there, even after it became apparent how disruptive the children were.

Is there anything more annoying than the parent who sees his child misbehave and laughs it off?  

What could these guys have been thinking?
Why  would they remain as their children squawked and howled throughout the performance?
Why not get up and walk outside?
What was so important about that infant being there?

I once drove along a two lane country road in Virginia, and a woman stopped her car, parked it in the lane, and walked across the road to talk to another woman who was standing in her yard. This was not a heated exchange. They were talking quite pleasantly, as if the one woman had not parked her car in the road and left it there as cars began to clot up the road behind it. The road was narrow enough one could not pull around on a shoulder--there was no shoulder. And it was busy enough a constant stream of cars coming in the opposite direction in the other lane prevented any hope of simply pulling around the stopped vehicle. So I was just stuck, amazed, watching this woman chat amiably as if I did not exist.

You see this sometimes in the post office or at a store, where the customer ahead of you keeps up a conversation well after transacting her or his business, oblivious to the line of customers behind.

This happens frequently in New Hampshire. Almost never in New York, where the clerk will usually cut things off to move the line along.

Friends tell of going to "Hamilton" for which they paid a small fortune, and someone in their row brought a child, maybe five, who spoke in that loud voice some kids have, insensitive to the fact there are other people in the vicinity, unaware they are not the only people in the room.  So between the rapping and ballads, a reedy voice would blurt out, "What's that Daddy?"

The wonder is the ushers did not find and eject that kid.

The wonder is these people get through their days in the world without being beaten into a bloody pulp. 
I guess for all the homicidal maniacs with guns blowing their way through America, a lot of Americans are simply orderly and too conflict averse to say anything. 
Ugh.

2 comments:

  1. If you think the parents are bad - what kind of adults do you think their kids (the ones now howling) will grow up to be? Entitled, undisiplined, self-centered fools who were always told they were the absolute best! God help us all!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anon,
    Well, we know what they grow up to be: Donald Trump.
    Phantom

    ReplyDelete