Wednesday's Wisdom....

Not everyone....

Several years ago, as I negotiated the parking lot of my local supermarket, my car was nearly struck by another vehicle.  The young man behind the wheel was using only one hand to steer because he had his cell phone in the other.  

I held up my hand, extending my fingers to resemble a phone and shouted, "Get off your phone!"

We each parked our cars.  As he got out, the young man called over to me, "Sorry about that. But everybody does it.  You do it, right?"

Without hesitation I strongly replied, "No. I don't."  I left it at that.  Since I was at Stop and Shop and not in a classroom, I didn't feel compelled to "teach" him a lesson on the perils of using one's cell phone whilst driving.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I should confess I have used my cell phone while driving. Once. It was in Syracuse, New York, around 11:30 pm back in 1999. With my mother and youngest daughter in the car, I was trying to find the hotel we were booked into while visiting daughter #1 at college.  Unable to exit the highway due to police activity on both the north and south sides of the road, I quickly found myself lost and in a not so nice area.  I had my daughter call the hotel desk and hand me the phone.  I then tried to extract from the young lady on the other end of the line directions to her hotel. After several, "turn right, take next exit, oh no! you don't want to go that way!," we eventually got there.)

I was reminded about the little incident in the store parking lot over the last few days while listening to some people, shall we say, "defend and explain" why a football player saw fit to take a switch and beat his four year old in the name of disciplining him.  Statements like, "it's part of the culture" and "he was just trying to be a good parent."  It's starting to sound like that young man's refrain, "everybody does it."

No.  Not everyone hits their children.  I never did.  Not once. I managed to raise three amazing daughters, who learned self discipline, and right from wrong without beating them with a stick. And just because someone was raised that way, doesn't mean they should do that to their children and continue a cycle of abuse.  Because in my book, that's what it is.  Abuse.

And I will say I can not possibly imagine what a four year old could do to deserve such treatment.

Perhaps, instead of lecturing parents on the evil of sugar in soda and snacks, the powers that be and the educational community should be more concerned about the way parents are "disciplining" their children.  I suspect that hitting them is far more harmful feeding them sugar.

I'm just sayin......
End of rant.