Mamacita says:  Behavior.  It’s on my mind.   Watching a mother allow her child to play roughly with an unpaid-for toy throughout the store, then discarding it at the checkout without paying for the damage, disgusted me, and I mentioned it on Twitter and was immediately challenged by a mother who saw nothing wrong with such behavior.  Well, fine; apparently, I’m an overly strict dinosaur who doesn’t understand that children need to be catered to in every way, and a toy that she has no intention of paying for – it’s merely diversion –  in a retail store is a lot easier than teaching the kid to sit still and behave herself in public.  Oops, there I go, being overly strict again.  My bad.

1. Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his own image. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

2. The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do. — John W. Holt, Jr.

3. If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality, I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own. — Richard Cecil

4. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. — Albert Einstein

5. When man learns to understand and control his own behavior. . . he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized. — Ayn Rand

6. I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, ‘No, I won’t do it, I won’t behave his way anymore. I’m lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving,’ and then you do it. — Leo F. Buscaglia

7. Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes. — Unknown

8. The behavior of some children suggests that their parents embarked on the sea of matrimony without a paddle. — Unknown

9. The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior. — Earl Warren

10. Children lose their innocence the very moment they are forced to make excuses for their parent’s bad behavior. — Krista Delle Femine

11. Children follow your footsteps, not your advice. — Krista Delle Femine

12. A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star on screen is a gun aimed at a 12 or 14-year-old. — Joe Eszterhas

13. You want to raise your child in such a way that you don’t have to control him, so that he will be in full possession of himself at all times. Upon that depends his good behavior, his health, his sanity. — L. Ron Hubbard

14. The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults. — Peter de Vries

15. You want to be a parent? Shut up and do your job. — ‘Dr. Robert Romano’ from E.R.

16. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. — James Baldwin

17. Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

18. Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means. — Albert Einstein

19. There is a sobering side to eccentricity. Odd behavior can flourish only in a tolerant society and that it often produces radical new ideas by virtue of its willingness to cast off accepted norms. Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light. — Unknown

20. Someone will always be looking at you as an example of how to behave. Don’t let them down. — Unknown

21. About all you have to do to get a man to behave right is expect him to. — The Country Sage, newspaper clipping, Albert W. Daw Collection

22. The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel. — George Bernard Shaw

23. If a man does not control his temper, it is a sad admission that he is not in control of his thoughts. He then becomes a victim of his own passions and emotions, which lead him to actions that are totally unfit for civilized behavior. — Ezra Taft Benson

24. When a woman behaves like a man, why can’t she behave like a nice man? —
Dame Edith Evans

25. It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won’t go. — Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Oh, I could keep going for hours.

My point is, if everyone in the world simply behaved properly, the whole world would be vastly improved and infinitely easier to go about in.

Since that’s never going to happen, the next best thing would be if the penalties for misbehavior were so severe you’d have to be certifiably nuts to misbehave.

Yes, lady woman in Kmart today who just watched and laughed as her two daughters raced around the store with that tricycle. Were you paying attention when the manager took it away and carried it off and all the other customers applauded?

And yes, we were all looking at YOU and passing judgment, and I bet we all agreed.