July 07, 2007
People suck.
So this weekend has been extremely kickass so far. The great dinner/meet-up with Cat and Mark notwithstanding, the San Diego Zoo was a blast. The girlfriend and I saw some really cool beasts, some great habitats, very humane set-ups along with a fair bit of care for the well-being of these animals, etc.
The worst part, however? The behavior of human beings with their kids in contrast with all of these animals. Within the first three hours, I witnessed: A fat sow of a mother yelling at her kids to get out of the way and practically bodyslamming one of them onto the concrete; a father taking his extremely young(let's say maybe two years old, if even that) daughter to an exhibit with tons of very large snakes, and then screaming at her for crying and being afraid of the exhibit; a father yelling at his daughter for crying while the child was obviously sunburnt and in pain; and a mother smacking her kid on the hand while reaching for free literature on a certain exhibit.
Granted, this is not everything that I witnessed, and if I tried to document every bit of idiocy while there my head certainly would have exploded, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with some parents? The animals treated their young with much more respect than the humans seemed to. Interspersed with all of these bizarre outbursts of human disgust, I witnessed: A mother meerkat glaring at tons of passing humans as her babies frolicked and played within the enclosure; a mother orangutan wrestling with her baby; and a baby swamp monkey having a blast with various other monkeys within its habitat, and making a spectacle out of himself to the bemusement of many already slightly irate, slightly despondent human parents - and their totally amazed, hyped-up kids.
What the fuck, people? Why even bother having the kids when they're obviously such a gigantic burden that you can't even exact a bit of common sense for their benefit? While I'd like to be disgusted at seeing the animals on display doing an infinitely better job of parenting than any of you could ever seem to manage, I'd rather be surprised at the amount of compassion you would have for your kids having an interest in animals and their lifestyles rather than them sitting on their asses in front of a TV or videogame system. Instead, you totally ignore anything that could contribute to their well-being and then yell at them when they don't stay completely quiet or get uncomfortable.
Maybe you should let your offspring into the orangutan cage or the meerkat enclosure. I think that either species could do a much better job of parenting than humans can, and the plus side is that the kid doesn't understand when the "parent" starts incessantly whining at them over some petty bullshit when the kid is clearly just being a kid.
Seriously - I can't stand kids, but at least half of you are just such shitty human beings that I fail to believe that you managed to hold someone down long enough to impregnate them, or vice-versa, much less do I believe that you're capable of taking care of whatever springs forth from their loins.
Posted by Jake at July 7, 2007 02:46 AM
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