alafarmnews

YEEEEOOOOWANNNK WANNNNK! Somebody’s baby just ripped loose with a squall that would crack the enamel on your teeth. With every eyebrow in the house flexed toward them, do the parents jump up and embarrassingly run for the back door? NOOOOOOOOO! They sit there exposing the full congregation to a noise not unlike the proverbial fingernails on the blackboard. Don’t these people know the church offers a nursery? That ear-splitting noise is nature’s way of telling the child’s caretaker to do something. I agree, let’s do something…

Don’t get me wrong. I know most parents have better sense than that and that not all children are constantly uncomfortable or unhappy with their existence. Most are decent, quiet little human beings.

Some friends of mine kept a comforter in a wheelbarrow that was parked in the den where their TV and stereo were. They had somehow trained their kid to sleep there. If they had guests and saw that their child was getting sleepy, they’d say, “Show so-and-so how you can get in your wheelbarrow.” Sure enough, he’d climb into the wheelbarrow, watch TV for awhile and soon fall asleep. The wheelbarrow was one of those big two wheel jobs but they had a big house. So once they knew he was down for the night, it rolled easily through the French doors in the back to the kid’s bedroom. I guess if you needed the wheelbarrow to haul some firewood you could put him in his bed or dump him on the floor somewhere.

Did I mention that people smoke in there? This smoke burns the child’s eyes, which makes him scream just that much louder. This piercing sound coming out of that little-bitty body at over 100 decibels is a combination of a modern jazz alto saxophone solo, all hip hop songs and the shrillest soprano in an Italian opera all forged into a rusty ten-inch spike driven through my temple. I know it ain’t the baby’s fault! Why don’t the people in management run them off?

How come is it, every time I go into a big department/grocery/sporting goods store there’s always some woman in there with her belligerent child wanting this, grabbing that…throwing stuff out of the buggy? She’ll smack him once but he’ll just give her a dirty look and holler that much louder. It’s hard for one to have a pleasant shopping experience under those circumstances.

You know how they have those cage things you put your shopping carts in out in the parking lot? I know what you’re thinking and I’m not suggesting they put a cage for children out there in the middle of that hot asphalt. I’m not a monster. I’m saying you could have individual cages with locking doors inside the store, out of the weather, near the front entrance. It wouldn’t take but a few seconds to walk over to the counter where they sell money orders and get a combination/keyed padlock. You’d pay whatever it costs (in the really good stores this service would be free), put your kid in there with a favorite toy and go shopping. Innovative stores would have vending machines with boxes of animal crackers near by.

If you don’t want to leave your child in one of the handy cages, I’ve thought about miniature straight jackets and little gag-masks like the one worn by Hannibal Lector in the movie “Silence of the Lambs.” You could then go on with your shopping, relaxed in knowing that other shoppers aren’t plotting your death. If you use the Hannibal method and put your subdued child on the rack near the wheels where the charcoal and dog food goes, don’t forget them at checkout.

You see people nowadays that will have their kid in a harness, walking them around on a leash, much like a dog. I thought about that a long time before I saw the first one and a few years before the word “humane” became part of my lexicon. My idea involved a shock collar like some people train a dog with; one of those where you have different energy levels on a hand-held remote control. If you see the dog doing something wrong, you just holler at ‘em and bump the button to give a slight jolt; just enough to make them jump a little. If they’re doing something really bad, like chasing a car, you can hold the button down and make them do a flip.

I thought this would be pretty a cool tool to use as an attention getting tactic for kids. Dogs learn quickly using this training method and they aren’t nearly as smart as humans. Catch Junior drawing with crayons on the wall, hit the button and make him do a flip. Catch ’em getting in the cabinet under the kitchen sink…flip. Pulling the cat’s tail…flip. When they get a little older, get a hair cut…flip. Turn that music down…flip. I thought I told you to mow the lawn…flip. You are NOT going out with that boy…flip.

Y’all know I’m kidding, right? Most of it, anyway.