Of Fish Hatcheries, French Fries and Butterflies

People and their fucking sense of entitlement is such an ass-sucking pain sometimes. People and their ways of fucking up their children for the rest of society to deal with is becoming an increasing pet peeve of mine.

The other day the wonderful Juniper and I were at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, where we witnessed a horrible example of parenting with her female spawn. She was in the process of giving the rest of us two young girls who don't believe that the rules apply to them. They were capturing butterflies, you see, as well as picking bits of flowers so they could smell them closer.

Contrast this with my upbringing at the KNC, where I was taught that if it is alive, we leave it alone and if it is dead, we put it back where we found it when we are done checking it out. This was not a polite suggestion, this was the rule if we wanted to be welcome back to the KNC. And given the amount of time I spent there as a child, not being welcome would have been traumatic to say the least.

Now we just returned from a jaunt to the Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery. The interpretive center is closed on Fridays at the moment, due to funding issues - which apparently means they can't leave the fucking fish food vending machine out by the show pond. This did not deter one pathetic excuse for a family from deciding to feed the fish, they just ran back to the car (or waddled, such as it was) to grab some leftover McDonald's fries. Never mind the big, bold sign on the end of the dock that admonishes people not to throw that kind of stuff to the fish - these people are above the fucking rules and we can thank them for teaching their children to be as well.

And let's not forget our run to South Haven yesterday, to visit Lake Michigan. It was no longer particularly stormy when we got there (a bummer actually, as storms off the lake are fucking awesome), but the waves were pretty intense. Suicide to be on the water like that - but that didn't stop a couple folks from letting their small children out into the waves. Thankfully we weren't around to see any of them drown - possibly none of them did. But if they didn't, it was not thanks to their braindead motherfucking parents.

At least I didn't have my kids with me for this shit. Because nothing says fun like explaining to your own children that we aren't going to do this or that, only to see other children doing these things that are impolite or just plain fucking wrong. My boys are used to watching other children do things they aren't allowed to and eldest actually remembers observing a few situations over the years, wherein a child or more provided him with a great example of why papa said no. But even those memories don't always compensate for the lack of a chance to do what they really wanted to do. But they are my boys and I will be damned if I am going to raise them that badly. I am far from the worlds best papa - I am a pretty good fuck up at times, but I will be totally fucked if my boys are going to grow up as completely fucked as all that.