We had trick-or-treat last night so today we’re just hanging out recovering from the great influx of sugar. Noah ended up being Batman and we went out with his Cousin Frankie (who was a pumpkin) and their friend S. (who was something from some japanaimation cartoon). My sister lives in a coveted great trick-or-treating neighborhood. There’s a haunted house at the end of the street that is really pretty scary. Lots of people come by with cars and vans full of kids and drop them off so it was nuts out there. Which leads me to the following mini-rant. Please excuse the old fogey-ness present in the rest of this entry.

What is up with the big kids these days? They were running around on skateboards in truly ghoulish costumes terrifying all the little kids. They ran into traffic and smart-mouthed grown-ups. Some of them didn’t bother to dress up at all. Others had such scary, bloody, monstrous outfits that they looked like a living R-rated movie. I didn’t like it. Noah didn’t like it. The neighbors handing out the candy didn’t like it. I don’t have a problem with kids — whatever their age — having fun getting some candy but c’mon people! When did big kids start getting so rotten? We weren’t that rotten when we were kids, were we? Please tell me we weren’t.

And on a related note, there is no way in hell that Noah is ever going to be allowed to watch R-rated slasher movies under my roof. I know that he may see them at a friend’s house but in my opinion that’s hugely different than parents basically condoning the consumption of that kind of crap. Not to mention the shoot ‘em up bloody video games. I wish more people were screening what their kids watched; I’m sure the more hideous costumes were created by prepubescent slasher fans. Is there any reason a 10-year old needs to watch Scream?

I worry about these kids. I worry about them having all of these images in their minds. I don’t care if their parents say they know it’s fake and they get the irony or whatever. Since when was irony a trait we wanted to give our kids? Since when was cynicism before 12 a virtue? I mean, kids will naturally rebel on their own so why are we always kicking them to the curb of rebellion before their time? Why do we keep telling them it’s cool to piss off grown-ups? Aren’t we all in this together? I see so many young kids with this world weary air; it terrifies me. It breaks my heart. They look so lonely.

Ahhh well. It’s hard to look outside at the real world; the world that’s Noah’s whether he likes it or not. I hope that I’m giving him the tools to deal with it all. To tell you the truth, I’d rather just raise him in a protective lucite box but I can’t seem to find one in his size. It’s a scary world out there.

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