5/30/2023 Parent Trap
I was in town the other day, volunteering at a food pantry, mopping the floor, when I overheard two of the other volunteers swapping stories about their kids. One story started off with the 11 year old kid asking for a banana, and I didn't hear most of the story, other than the kid telling the mom, "You need to calm down," and the mom, in relaying the story saying, "I'm always saying that to her: 'You need to calm down.'" So I have no idea what that was about, but I'd bet that, aside from just mimicking the mom, the kid had solid grounds for saying what she said.
The other volunteer's story about their kid involved his 15 year old daughter getting a henna tattoo (a type of temporary tattoo that is applied to the skin as a paste, and wherever the paste touches the skin, the skin becomes temporarily stained), texting him a picture of it, and then not replying for an hour when he asked if it was permanent. I could tell pretty much right away that the daughter knew exactly what she was doing, hates her dad, and wanted to jab him, so she purposely got the henna tattoo, knowing he wouldn't appreciate her not "discussing" it with him first, and left him hanging for an hour so that he'd sweat over it. If the children have ire toward the parents, here in the early 21st century, I'm going to go ahead and conclude that it's not without good reason, and the plot certainly thickened when I chimed in. I usually tend to stay out of these things and let the chimpanzees have their way with each other, but I guess I couldn't help myself this time. The conversation became pretty thick and steered toward the bible somehow. Apparently some people believe that the line about not changing your temple refers specifically to not getting tattoos. I shared my views about how I believe the bible was written by people in power so they could make all these laws to benefit themselves and people would have to follow them because "God said so." In relaying this story to Adam later, he offered that it wasn't about power, rather they were just liars. The bible was written by liars. I said this, in essence, to the other volunteers when one of them stated that the bible was transcribed by people to whom god was speaking. I replied that they only said god was speaking to them, but they were lying. They made it all up so that everyone else would have to do whatever they said. People also use their interpretations of the bible--rather the interpretations that are handed down to them by other liars--still to force others to bend to their will. So the example here, "Don't change your temple." Your temple could be anything. For people who don't want their kids getting tattoos, your temple is now suddenly your body. When pressed about what's wrong with getting a tattoo, other than their belief that the bible says it's wrong to get tattoos, which it doesn't, the answer then changed to, "Well there are legal ramifications for her." Her being the 15 year old girl as it is illegal to get a tattoo under a certain age without parental consent, and the age varies from state to state. He believes that in this state, it is age 16. I didn't get around to saying this, but saying that there are legal ramifications for her implies that he plans on turning her in if she gets a tattoo without his consent before she's 16. There are only legal ramifications if someone turns her in and presses charges. Not to mention the legal ramifications for the tattoo artist. No tattoo artist is going to risk their job for that. He then went on about the legal ramifications for himself because of how a parent is legally responsible for anything their child does until they are 18. Later on, I was revisiting the conversation in my mind, and it occurred to me that this is the exact argument my mother gave when she said she didn't want me to smoke marijuana. As a youngster, I remember being involved in a conversation about marijuana where she said flatly that it's illegal, she tried it a couple times, it burned like hell in her lungs, and she just didn't care for it. And supposedly, it being illegal and her dislike for it were supposed to be reason enough for me to not smoke it. I got news: I don't care for mushrooms on my pizza, but I don't try to convince other people that it's wrong to have mushrooms on their pizza because I don't like them, that's for goddamn sure. I'll even go a step further. The social factor. In many circles, smoking marijuana, or having tattoos, or both, whichever example you want to take, is considered taboo. Doing so or associating with others who do so would lower your social standing within that group. If there's one thing I know about people, one of their greatest fears is to be ostracized from their social group. Circling back to the parents: yes, I acknowledge that most people believe in and abide by laws that put the parents under pressure to keep their children from breaking the law due to the threat of their own imprisonment. However, I don't think it's the imprisonment that really scares them. It's the loss of their social status as a result of their imprisonment that scares them. They'll swear up and down that their sole concern is for the child's well-being: "I don't want her to get something permanent applied to her skin that she'll regret in 20 years." Trust me. At 15, as a child of normal mental development (I've met her a couple times), she's aware of the permanence of tattoos. In reality, it's not at all about the child's well-being. It's about the parent's social status, but no parent is ever going to admit this. Why, when it comes to Law, I have nothing to say, for laws were never meant to be understood, and it is foolish to make the attempt. Comments are closed.
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