Scheiss Weekly

My So-Called Super Powers

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Jane GoodwinFebruary 3, 2018

My so-called super powers

Mamacita says: I have super powers, but they’re not the super powers I would have chosen. They’re not the super powers I wanted. If I had been allowed to choose my talents, I would have picked singing, dancing, and astronaut skills. I don’t even have a green thumb – heck, I can kill a cactus in a couple of weeks just by walking past it. However, like a talent for sight-reading music containing a lot of sharps, and the ability to perform mathematical calculations involving numbers over a hundred without a calculator, my super powers are real. They’re just weird.

1. I can make the phone and/or doorbell ring by merely thinking about going to the bathroom.
2. I can turn on the cable and the TV with perfect coordination three times, but the fourth time will involve an expensive house call from the cable guy and, for some reason I for the life of me can’t figure out, the landline phone.
3. I know nothing about sports and care even less, but every year I put a few dollars on whatever team nobody else wanted, or the team wearing the colors that take my fancy, or the team that hasn’t appeared in the news for rape or drugs or booze, or the team on which nobody has smoked for years or, better still, ever, and every year I win something. It’s to the point that I have to chase down and play hide and seek with the guy collecting money; people don’t even want me to have a look at the weird forky team matchup thing. Last year I won sixty dollars, and I just PayPal-ed the guy ten dollars and asked him to put it on any team that was left over. It’s a gift, but I have no idea what I’m doing. We generally go out to eat on the winnings.
4. All I have to do is step into the shower and before I’m even wet, someone will need me to drive them somewhere really important and they have to leave immediately.
5. I am the only person in this house who understands the mechanism and righteousness of the toilet paper holder.
6. I know where the light bulbs, batteries, scissors, and tape are “hidden.”
7. I understand the philosophy and workings of clumping kitty litter.
8. I can find the Christmas tree topper in under thirty seconds.
9. I keep a goodly supply of spices and herbs, and I know how to use them. I even grow them, thanks to my son’s Christmas present.
  Thank you for this awesome Christmas gift, son!
10. The trash truck comes around every Wednesday morning, so on Tuesday night, I gather up all the trash in the house, bag it, put it in the bin, and wheel the bin out to the curb. This is not rocket science, but apparently I am the only rocket scientist who lives here.
11. I have mastered the art of “spring forward” and “fall back.” My only slightly OCD need for a clock on every wall makes this something that takes a little time (TIME. Get it? I am so witty.) but twice a year, I get it done. Other people who live here are just confused about whether or not they’re going to be late because the clock in their vehicle is only correct half the year. I am too Monk to have a clock that isn’t exactly right, but I am also more than a little bit adamant that other people’s things are their concern, not mine. This is why I always knocked before entering my children’s bedrooms. Little kids have rights, too.
12. Due to the necessity of earning a living and feeding/clothing my children, I have become the master of getting up and going to work even with migraines so blinding I have to crawl around the house on my hands and knees, feeling for the walls because, literally, the migraine has blinded me. I can pack lunches, feed and dress small children, get them and myself to school, teach all day, work a ball game or dance after school, get everybody home again, bathed, and to bed before crashing and weeping on the floor of the shower stall. My students always knew when I had a migraine because a vein on the side of my face throbbed. Apparently it was pretty funny to watch. When I think about this, my first thought is always “Thank goodness there were no camera phones back then.” Some autotune and a soundtrack would have been hilarious only if it wasn’t me.

These super powers are not glamorous or spotlight-worthy, but they got, and get, me and other people through many a difficult day, which, when you think about it, is what super powers are supposed to do.

Hypocrisy 101

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Jane GoodwinJanuary 28, 2018

Mamacita says: Today I wish to discuss hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of some people’s ancestral pride.

Oh, the hypocrisy of some people’s ancestral pride!

So many people are interested in and curious about their DNA origins, paying out good money to be analyzed and labeled. . .it’s a fad right now. I just saw four commercials about it this afternoon. People are excited to discover their roots. . . and so many people interested in keeping out the people with that same DNA lest they contaminate the nation. This seems more than just a little bit hypocritical, yes?

We are all descended from immigrants. Where would we be if those immigrants had been denied entrance? You. Where would you be? You would be speaking another language, probably one you profess to mock today. You would be wearing different clothes, clothing that might set you apart from the crowd you hang out with today. You might be eating different foods, ETHNIC foods, that you either claim to dislike or that you pay a lot of money to experience. “Hey, let’s go for some Thai/Mexican/Chinese, etc, but let’s not admit that the cooks or servers are on our level.” “Listen to that guy with his broken English trying to check out at Walmart!” says the guy who can’t even manage to speak ONE language properly yet he mocks a guy who speaks two. High school dropouts mock hardworking guys who stayed in school and are reaping the rewards of it.

Rich people advocate deportation because they fear, oh, I don’t know. Being outclassed? Being outsmarted? Somebody else earning some money? A nickel coming in and them not there to squeeze it?

Poor people advocate deportation because they fear, oh, I don’t know. Someone else getting a job? Someone else getting, well, anything?

It all smacks of people kicking away the ladder after they and theirs climbed up it, and they don’t want to share whatever they found at the top.

The atmosphere in our nation disturbs me greatly. This atmosphere of intolerance and bigotry and selfishness and being afraid of what we don’t understand. Hey, a little education might help with that last one.

No one race is better than any other race. We are all human beings, equal in the sight of whatever God, or no God at all, any person believes, or doesn’t believe, in. We all share this one planet. There is room for everyone. Everyone. Not just you.

And how would you like it if you were treated as you treat others?

Remember, I taught about the Holocaust for over twenty years. The similarities are frightening. Horrifying.

Then again, if some people’s ancestors had been denied entrance all those years ago, perhaps some of those people would have embraced education anyway, finished school, gone to university, become doctors, surgeons, scientists, educated people and clear strong thinkers. Some would do that, and some would not. Every day people defy the odds. It’s just easier to do so here. Some of your ancestors did that, and some did not. Did you? Are you an educated person and a strong thinker or do you just follow the crowd?

Are you a person who does what is easy, or what is right?

My doctor is an immigrant. Perhaps yours is, too. Your child’s life may lie in the hands of someone for whom English is not the first language. You. You are not a surgeon. Stand back and let the trained professional work or your child, left in your untrained hands, will die.

Now, march, march, march, and demand that this surgeon be deported because he is not as good as you and does not deserve to live in a nation where his skills just saved your child.

Your ancestors arrived here and were admitted. That you would dare to presume that you or anyone else has the ability, the unmitigated gall, to say who will go and who will stay is mind-boggling. How dare you draft yourself to be the judge.

How dare you.

I’ve had many foreign students in my classes, and most of the time their English was much better than most of my other students. Their essays were about gratitude, and education, and pride. Not one of them wrote about gettin’ it on with a little filly a’standin’ yonder at the end of the bar, or LOLing at the bowling alley that one time. You know, like you did.

Choose goodness. Choose mercy. Choose honesty. Choose nobility. Choose generosity. Defy all who would encourage you to choose otherwise. Defy. All.

I speak too much. I am not on your side. I am on their side. Bring it on.

The Challenger: Never Forget

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Jane GoodwinJanuary 28, 2018

Challenger Crew Mamacita says: I repost this every year on the anniversary of the Challenger explosion.

My school was excited beyond all measure about the Challenger. A TEACHER was going into space, and this was unheard of. The students were thrilled to think of the possibility that perhaps some day, mean old Mrs. HagTeacher might be launched out into the vastness of space, never to give a pop math quiz again.

My community is proud to boast several astronauts, and there are billboards with their pictures and names in several places all over the county. My students were familiar with the concept of “astronaut,” but Lawrence County astronauts most kids really knew next to nothing about the realities of being one. A teacher, on the other hand, was someone they were familiar with. They knew what a teacher actually did on a daily basis – or thought they knew. That a teacher might also be an astronaut, of sorts, was a brand new concept. If a local person could be an astronaut, maybe it was a possibility for the students, but if a teacher could go into space, then the chances that a student might someday go into space suddenly got even better odds. The next astronaut might even be someone from our school. My school took this enthusiasm and ran with it.

The principal rented a big screen TV. Remember, this was back in the days when most schools, especially tiny ones like mine, did not have vast technological or media resources. We rented a big-screen tv, and big screen TV, 1980's scheduled a big convocation. The whole student population was going to watch a teacher go into space via a big convocation in the gym, all eyes on that one big screen. This seems ludicrous now, but back then it was cutting edge. BIG SCREEN. (45 inches, mind you.) BIG. One 45-inch TV for a gym full of kids to watch. There was no television access of any kind in the entire school, so one of the teachers brought in a satellite dish just for the afternoon. This was a huge deal. Huge.

We had essay contests about it. Trivia contests about it. We sent home newsletters with at-home things that parents could do with their children, about it. It was the biggest deal of the semester.

This is the newsletter that was sent home with all students a few days before the Challenger disaster.

I had hall duty that day, and couldn’t go with the students to the gym, to watch the teacher go into space. But as I sat there, and watched the children file past, in twos and threes, to the gym, I was filled with awe that they were going to see something never seen before: a shuttle launch with a teacher aboard. An ordinary person was going into space. A teacher. For the rest of their lives, they would realize that all things are connected, even outer space, to what we learn from a teacher in a classroom. And that teachers have courage, and are willing to do things most people will never be able to do.

I sat there in the hall and watched them go into the gym, giggly and happy and full of anticipation. Each child had a blank sheet of paper in his/her hand, and a pencil, to draw what they saw. There was going to be a big contest.

Only a few minutes later, I sat there in the hall and watched these same students file back into their classrooms. They were quiet, and their eyes were big. Nothing had changed for me; I was still sitting there in the hall, but for those children, a lot had changed.

I don’t even remember what we did in my classroom for the rest of that afternoon. I know that I did not envy the elementary teachers. What could they possibly be telling the small children about what they had seen? I just do not know. My own children were down there in the lower grades; they didn’t have much to say when we got home. My little son was affected the most, I think; he had always been obsessed with rockets and loud things that went “boom,” but this was a loud “boom” that occurred before his very eyes, and the rocket blew apart, and he was old enough to realize what it meant.

Later in the afternoon, I looked out my classroom windows and saw the men loading the rented big-screen TV into a truck. It drove away.

A few parents were upset that their children had been shown the explosion in school, but they were completely out of line, and I think even they knew it. But upset people are often illogical.

The media played up the ‘teacher’ part of this tragedy. My children knew all about teachers; both their parents were teachers. Teachers were no big deal to them. My children, small as they were, wondered why none of the other people on board that shuttle were mentioned much, on tv or in the papers. I wondered that, myself.

Quotation Saturday: Democracy and Government

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Jane GoodwinJanuary 12, 2018

quotation saturday, mamacita's blog, jane goodwin

Every Saturday: Quotations to feed your soul.

Mamacita says: Democracy and government are much in the news these days, so Quotation Saturday is focusing on them.
1) America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard
2) War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran
3) Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
4) They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
5) One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
6) If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)
7) Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O’Rourke
8) The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
Scheiss Weekly: Democracy and Government
9) Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
10) No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
11) There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
12) The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)
13) Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson
14) The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen
15) A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
16) The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)
17) Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)
18) The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson
19) Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
20) None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
Quotation Saturday: Democracy and Government
21) When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd
22) Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken
23) The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken
24) It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
25) Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous
26) Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
27) Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton
28) The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall
29) [On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
Excellent. It should be like this today.
30) Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
31) Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner
32) In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy
33) There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
34) If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams
35) If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham
36) A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler
37) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy
38) The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa
39) Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand
Scheiss Weekly: Democracy and Government
40) It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard
41) A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
42) The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
43) The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom
44) Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter
45) It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell
46) No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz
47) The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand
48) The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain
Career Politician: Yesterday and Today
49) What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley 50). A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw

I think we would all do well to remember these things.

12 Things That Really Annoy Me

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Jane GoodwinJanuary 7, 2018

These things really, really bother me.

Mamacita says: I’m a pretty easy-going person, regardless of what you may have heard from people who know me well, but there are some things that really annoy me. Some are major; some are minor. Most of these are petty. I admit it. But they still annoy me. And nobody should do them.

All of them are easily preventable. All of them are things people do by choice, and when there is one choice, there will always be another.

Nobody is perfect. I’m certainly not, and neither are you. But these are such simple things, none of them rocket science, and all are things people choose to do, or not to do. And when there are choices, there are consequences. At least, there should be. When we choose well, we welcome the consequences. Rewards are consequences. When we choose poorly, we dread the consequences and rightly so. We all get the consequences we earn, ie deserve.

Seriously. These are things that annoy the breath of life out of me, almost literally. (See #6)

These are in no particular order. They all annoy me. A lot.

Litterbugs. Trashy people who throw paper products, cans, etc, where such things are not supposed to find their final resting place are pigs. Period. Oink oink oink. Pigs. Keep a bag in your car until you get home, and I don’t care how badly your baby blew out that diaper. It’s yours and it’s your job to take care of it, not anyone else’s.
People who don’t seem to understand that a grocery store aisle is like a highway. You travel up one side and down the other. You don’t travel down the middle. You don’t go up the down aisle or down the up aisle. It’s a little road. Each aisle is a little road. Drive accordingly. And if you run into friends, don’t gather for a long chat and block things.
Grocery carts belong in the corral after you’ve unloaded them. If your small child is in the cart and you don’t want to leave him/her in the car – but why would you even think you had to do that? – keep the child in the cart while you’re unloading and parking and walk the child back to the car. Problem solved.
People who don’t know how to use their own language. Grammar, spelling, punctuation. . . these are not difficult things. We all took the same classes in elementary and junior high. We all had the same books. Some of us picked up on these things the first week. Some people are in their sixties and still don’t get it. WHYYYYYYYY? We didn’t know who the semi-illiterate among us were until Facebook, of course, but now we do. Oh, yesssss, we do.
Those who choose not to use their turn signals. So rude. So crude. So mean-spirited. So lacking in basic good manners.
Listen. “Literally” doesn’t mean what some people seem to think it means. If you tell me that you literally died laughing, I will look for you in the obits because that’s where you had better be. “Literally” means “actually.” If you are literally rolling on the floor laughing, you are physically down on the floor, actually rolling around on the floor whilst laughing. Perhaps you mean that you were “figuratively” or “inferentially” rolling around on the floor laughing. Picky much? Hey. Words are magic. Use them properly or they will bury you. Literally AND figuratively.
Thieves. People who steal from others are scum. Whether a person is a shoplifter or a bank robber or an addict grabbing whatever he can for drugs or an embezzler or an adulterer or whatever, those who help themselves to someone else’s property are creeps and criminals.
Speeders. How dare you turn yourself into someone else’s executioner, you selfish thing. There is no place you have to be that is worth someone else’s life.
Do you have a handicap plate or hangtag? You do? Then and only then may you park in a handicap spot. You don’t? Then park elsewhere. And it doesn’t matter if you’re only going to run in for a minute, either. No permissions? Back out and park where you belong.
Did you do your homework? Then you’ll get the points. Did you forget to do your homework? No points for you this time. This applies to your kids, too. P.S. Is your name on your paper? No? I keep a shredder in the room for those. (Third offense) (Tomorrow is too late.)
Are you a marketer who pimps and/or creates daytime television commercials? Medicare? Medicaid? Lawyers? Drugs? Weight-loss programs? Novelty ways to sue someone? “Can we do this tomorrow?” Cell phones for people who can’t figure out how to use a cell phone? Creams for those under-eye bags? The same dreadful TV show being pimped over and over and over and over, sometimes two or three times in one ad slot? Shame on you.
People who are knowingly (or unknowingly) undereducated, and who fall for carefully keyworded political speeches and reality-show pimps who tell them precisely what they want to hear and continue to support such horrors because they either don’t know any better or know exactly what they’re doing and have chosen to be that kind of people. I really don’t what which is worse: stupid, or evil. Most days I’m pretty sure they’re one and the same.

Again, most of these are petty things. Golly, to be upset because people are people and do people things. But these are not my people. Heaven help you if these are yours.

Every Child Deserves An Audience. Stay In Your Seat.

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Jane GoodwinDecember 12, 2017

Mamacita says: I’ve posted about this subject before, but with the approach of holiday season, it’s on my mind again, so I’ve written a new post about this same thing.

This is important. Proper behavior isn’t always fun. Nice people behave themselves anyway.

This is for you, parents. ALL of you parents. Holidays concerts are fast approaching, and your children are working hard to prepare. Don’t discount their big night because your personal feet hurt, you’re hungry, you’re missing your shows, and you left your good manners at home.

We’re tired. We work all day and in the evenings, we deserve a few hours to rest, eat, and just, well, unwind. We deserve some time to ourselves, to put our feet up, watch some tv, sigh a lot, snack, and just BE. We deserve some time to do these things before we go to bed and get some sleep so we can do the same things again tomorrow. Undisturbed downtime. Yes, we deserve some of that.

If you are a parent of school-age children and this is your typical evening, shame on you.

If this is what you choose – yourself – instead of getting up off your, um, couch, and heading out to watch your child participate in something, shame on you.

Shame on you, too, if you stay in your seat just long enough to watch your own child’s part and then leave as soon as you can to get home and commence your well-deserved unwinding.

EVERY CHILD DESERVES AN AUDIENCE.

sparse auditorium For over twenty years, I attended school concerts, spelling bees, science fairs, plays, and other things, and for over twenty years I watched families pack up and leave the very minute THEIR child’s part was finished. These people paid no attention to the fact that the show was still going on while they were loudly bustling themselves up the aisles, out the doors, and across the parking lot so they could beat the rush getting out of the place, and get HOME where they could, finally, after an extra-long day, unwind. After all, they deserved it, didn’t they?

No, they didn’t. In fact, what these people want or think they deserve doesn’t even enter into the equation here. It is the children who matter, not the adults.

The smallest children had the biggest audience, but as soon as the lower elementary’s part in the concert was over, these were also the very people who couldn’t leave fast or soon enough, paying no attention whatsoever to the older children still on stage.

The upper elementary children had a smaller audience, and even those parents often required their kids to find them as soon as their part was over so they could go home and get what was left of that well-deserved downtime-before-bedtime. TV is important, you know, and a kid’s show isn’t, especially when it isn’t even MY kid up there now.

By the time the middle school kids were onstage, only Grandma, Mom, a few antsy siblings, and those families with class remained in the audience. The older kids played mostly to empty seats, because the once filled-to-overflowing, standing-room-only auditorium had emptied like a kicked anthill.

Yes, sometimes a school concert means a late night. You can’t deal with that once a year? Poor you. Your younger children can’t deal with it? Take turns going out in the hallway with them. Let them fall asleep. Your kid can’t deal with a disrupted schedule once a year? Are you sure you’re talking about your child? Athletic functions often mean a late night, too; do you behave like this for basketball games? I suspect not.

There’s FOOTBALL on TV that night? Lost is on? Good parents know that’s not even a negotiable point. Your children come first, or you’re a bad parent.

If you have small children whose part in a concert is usually first, try to picture YOUR child singing his/her heart out before an empty auditorium. Think of how those children must feel when you’re packing up and leaving while they’re on stage singing much-practiced songs meant for you, and you obviously care more about yourselves than about children who aren’t yours . . . .

Oh, and before I forget: even though I pretty much covered the subject of proper theatre behavior in another post, let me repeat a few things here: While you’re sitting in your seat, watching a concert, shut up. Nice people do not talk or otherwise make noise in a theatre. Nice people are quiet as mice in a theater, as well. (Note the spelling difference. Look it up.) In both places, nice people are quiet.

Stay for the whole thing. I don’t CARE if you’re tired or bored out of your mind.

Put your child in those other children’s places. Remember, YOUR child is someone else’s child to everyone else in the universe except you. You don’t want other people treating your child like that, do you?

Stay for the whole concert. You’re bored? Too bad. You hate this stuff? I don’t care.

Don’t detract from the glory and wonder and delight of children singing together just because you’re too selfish to even try to listen properly and enjoy it. Don’t make children feel that their hard work was in vain because all YOU can think about is that if you leave now you might get in on the last quarter of your very important game.

Anyone of any age who does not show respect to those onstage is a rude, childish beast.

I can’t say this enough: Every child deserves an audience. STAY IN YOUR SEAT until the entire thing is over.

Yeah, poor you. Poor you with a child who has the ability and the desire to participate in the arts or the sciences. Millions of parents would give anything they’ve got to be in your shoes, and you would rather throw it away than take advantage of it.

How much would y’all bet that these same parents find no difficulty whatsoever in sitting for hours watching a sport?

I was often bored, watching an overlong school concert. But I stayed for the whole thing. I stayed for the whole thing because those children were far more important than anything else I might have wanted to do that night.

Why are so many parents so childish and selfish? Childhood is such a brief fleeting moment in life; what kind of parents would CHOOSE not to watch every possible microsecond of it that’s possible to watch? Why do so many parents choose to stay home and watch Honey Boo Boo and her repulsive family instead of their own children? June Shannon’s kids are more important than your own? The Duck Dynasty family is more important than yours? The Game of Thrones dynasties are more important than those children? That awesome new series on Netflix is more important than a child? What kind of parents choose those things over children?

I think we all know what kind of parents would make that choice.

Children singing their hearts out while adults are walking out so they can get home and watch tv and have a beer and put their feet up. Such people are beyond my comprehension.

Children are singing for us; why don’t we even want to listen?

Oh yeah. Football, Duck Dynasty, recliners, selfishness, and entitlement.