Shut Yer Pie Hole!

Over at the L.A. Times this week, writer Amy Alkon wrote an excellent piece about unruly kids acting up in public. She writes specifically of an incident on a Southwest Airlines flight in which a mother and her screaming child were kicked off the plane (while they were still on the ground, I assume). I agree wholeheartedly with just about everything she says, and then some. According to Ms. Alkon:

There is a notion, reflected in numerous blog comments about the incident, that other passengers should "just deal" and "give a kid a break." This notion is wrong. Parents like Root and others who selfishly force the rest of us to pay the cost of their choices in life aren't just bothering us; they're stealing from us. Most people don't see it this way, because what they're stealing isn't a thing we can grab on to, like a wallet. They're stealing our attention, our time and our peace of mind.

More and more, we're all victims of these many small muggings every day. Our perp doesn't wear a ski mask or carry a gun; he wears Dockers and shouts into his iPhone in the line behind us at Starbucks, streaming his dull life into our brains, never considering for a moment whether our attention belongs to him. These little acts of social thuggery are inconsequential in and of themselves, but they add up -- wearing away at our patience and good nature and making our daily lives feel like one big wrestling smackdown.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Amen, Ms. Alkon! Will you marry me? This article should be required reading for every parent in the country. Heck, it ought to be plastered on every other billboard nationwide. Read aloud on every radio station on a continuous loop. Planes should sky write it over every major city once an hour.