"Lions, Tigers, and Bears. Oh My!"

 

“Lions, and Tigers and Bears. Oh my!” Many of us are aware of that famous line from a movie made during The Great Depression and produced in 1939. It was called “The Wizard of Oz”. I thought about that line this morning as I had a day off both jobs, only to turn to my laptop for my writing business.

Every day there are always multiple things to write about. Working in two different fields outside of the home gives me tons to consider and to write about. I’ll start with comedy. Yes, comedy is what I see at the marketplace I work at. Tons of it. I quite often have to contain myself. However, every once in a while, I’ll start to giggle to myself while stocking shelves, or something to that nature. When I could be most in my thoughts as those thoughts begin to merge as I check dates, pull stock, do freezer and cooler work and so forth.

One of my high school friends from the 1970s, a brilliant woman, a lawyer I’d just gotten reacquainted with through social media—I’d wondered if she’d still giggled at her own thoughts and felt a near embarrassment in doing so when witnessed. It was a subject her and I would talk about occasionally during our cross-country and spring track seasons, back then. She was a year after me, yet we were only a month apart in age. For I started kindergarten at age four. Most of the people who graduated high school with her were my age.

This brings me to yesterday, as I was manning the register, that would be unless the store was quiet then my chores would be facing the closest aisle nearby and perhaps putting out stock, whilst checking dates too. I heard this young boy forcefully asking his mom over and over again about snacks he wanted her to purchase. Too, he’d begun to run behind me back and forth, as well—nearly running all over the store prior to that.

The squeaky misbehavior in his voice grabbed at the ancestral realm of not only my childhood, but also my military background. I’d known our daughters had not ever misbehaved in a restaurant or supermarket. I sort of wondered why, for a moment that was. Then I realized I’d do a serious yet comedic growl when I was displeased with one or both our daughters before they’d hit their teen years. It was to the point that one morning in our minivan before school, our oldest aged nine said giggling, “…Mom. You’re a honey badger.” She stated with some certainty when asked what kind of animal had I thought I was. And I answered in a comedic-snarky sense “…a yellow lab. They’re cute. Right?” That’s when she answered with the honey badger remark. And I countered with, “Oh a honey badger sounds so sweet.” Our two daughters laughed as they called out, “No. No. Mom…” Of course, I took it further entertaining them with pretending not to know what a honey badger was.

Now back to our restless little boy in the marketplace. I was a tad concerned, but I realized the store was calm, and I’d not seen an elder person or anyone in the aisle he’d been running the most in—which was where I worked closest to the registers. Instead, my mind flipped to realizing that this hadn’t occurred all that much there, and if he were my child I could think of all important groundings. Some I know I’d do were nearly laughable, that would be to an adult with a good sense of humor. The silly things you say to your children, when you’re absolutely fed up. And as we know when a parent stops talking, there’s grounding up ahead. Most of us as children have known that dread at some point and time, no matter how saintly we may have been as children.

In the past, it had been mostly my voice that could stop a child in their tracks. Yet, I refrained many times. Especially, if it was in a marketplace of any kind. And especially, if it wasn’t a good friend’s child going awry after their parent had already tried to stop them. I had a few friends see me in action with their children and I was asked if they could borrow my commanding voice. Which they’d see me giggle seconds later after giving a stern warning—for my command voice even shocks me.

So, here I was unable to stop a misbehaving child. Yet, I realized in the past I’d taken our daughters to the park and played for four hours or more outside with them before we’d then go shopping. They were half asleep in the back of our minivan by the time we’d gotten to the market. Sometimes totally out where I’d have to bring the stroller and do a week’s worth of shopping with the stroller and one or both children sleeping in it. They’d wake up just as I’d finish the food-shopping.

Other times, I’d incorporate lessons in shopping with them. My mother-in-law had asked me many years ago how I could food-shop with children. I told her, “I get them involved in the chore. It took the boredom that they might feel in the event.” She couldn’t figure out how I kept the children quiet for a good period of time while on the phone with her, either. I told her, that they had been outside, or I made them run laps on our property because, “it helped the garden…” It was dig in the dirt with mommy or run eight laps around the outside of the house. They chose running eight laps around the outside of the house. However, we all know that with children nearing the teenage years that all changes. Many times, there are nearly few guardrails that the children at those stages will adhere to, no matter the punishment.

Too, depending on the child, those boundaries could be seen as a challenge. It’s a test they want to try. We just hope and pray it doesn’t carry on into their adulthood to the point of permanent damage or worse. Those years, when you want to say, “No…” to their new friends who you view as trouble, you hold back in order to not push your child away. Because as a parent you want to leave that door open so they can come to you when they most need you in the present and the future. I can say it is a tough push and pull process of parenting.

Conversely, if a parent doesn’t hold to most of the guardrails. Such as, if the supposed guardrails are only verbal threats, then society may be in trouble. Yes, it extends like a row of dominos falling. There are more impacts to the family and then into society. Quite a few of us get away with breaking few boundary lines that should not be entertained in breaking. Most of us are not caught with our hands in the cookie jar. But it still eventually has its effect on our view and our selections in this world of what we consider criminal behavior.

The older we become, the longer we are around with less boundaries the more danger there is to our society, to our country, and perhaps to the world. Yes, there are personalities that will become more influential, more destructive to others and to our world. As a collective society, we are supposed to stop them, not to encourage them.

Not encouraging them, is allowing the law to be balanced. Calling out bullying, which our society and schools have failed in handling the bully.  I know first-hand, that the bully usually wins or does just enough damage to escape the real punishment due them. Every day it unfolds right before our very eyes, yet only when it affects us do we reckon with it. I can say, there are those of us willing to reckon with it before the bully wins. However, I know most people are afraid of the ‘schoolyard bully’ in sixth grade. To the point, even the teachers, the administrators and town council ignore the bully’s harm to children who appear to fade into the shadows of life or move far away from the only thing they ever knew. It is because the force of the bully is so powerful, that all the others witness is, “…I don’t want to have to contend with being bullied either. It’s so terrible…”. Too, most people are coerced into believing that the bully is almighty, able to infiltrate every fiber of their being, and if they just remain vigilant in fear, they will be unscathed. I’ve got news for you. ‘Noone leaves this life on earth unscathed.’ Some more than others, yet no one is immune to that part of life.

This now brings me to our current events and the little boy age of about six- or seven-years old misbehaving in the marketplace. His older brother, who appeared age twelve had no comment to stop his brother. Too, by the time the mother was getting ready to have me at the register she was done. She did her best trying to maintain her parental decorum in a marketplace, although she remained extremely pleasant. Yet, I wondered why I was seeing a mother with two school-aged boys during schooltime. I’d witnessed this the day before as I’d gone out for a seven-mile run at just past noon, two thirteen-fourteen-year-olds playing hoops at a nearby home. I’d thought perhaps a local private school was off those days. Yet, I hadn’t heard anything of the sort.

What I may be witnessing is either defiance, coincidences, illness of parents, or something I have no knowledge about. Yet, what came to mind was, the unruly behaviors of mostly white men and some white women who were given more than what they needed with few boundaries during their childhood years and now they are full-grown, bully adults or at least followers of the cult of bullying. They’re wrecking the joint.

The joint linked between good and evil—between a democracy and a dictatorship/authoritarian rule. Now evil is prevailing because of political fatigue, fear, and a stiff-necked people. Too, people who didn’t want to know. They stuck their heads in how they wanted a homogentisic society to be for them. Soon they will suffer like the rest of us. Remember there can be only one big bully, one king at the top of the food chain—the rest of us are just food for the taking.

I hope our country awakens soon enough and pressures the powers that be in congress, the senate, the judiciary and the oval office to turn this chaos into prison sentences for the current president, Musk and his minions, some senators like Jordan who defied giving other’s their rights after dealing with unscrupulous acts by a rapist now decades ago. For these few and many others deserve prison at the very least, not leadership. Their leadership has increased the corruption among the souls of this nation.---Jody-Lynn Reicher