urbpan | Exchange in the park

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Exchange in the park

As I was walking the dogs back home through the park this morning, I caught up to a group of teenage boys, two of whom were throwing rocks at the ducks in the river. I've encountered this before, and in the past reacted by screaming. I really need to keep my cool more often. As I approached, the boys were tired of their game, and sat on a bench. As I was passing, one boy gestured at my dogs and said

"Yo, thassa half-pit right there, right?"

I replied "They're both full pit. Please don't throw rocks at them, okay?"

Before my superego could get control of the situation, my id insisted on adding,

"Asswipes."

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You did not actually say "asswipes" out loud, did you?!

Quite loud.

Dude! Taking people to task for their public behavior (like littering and throwing rocks at ducks) is one area where I have no courage but wish I did.

I blanch from confrontation, but my wife (the lovely and talented

cottonmanifesto) has gotten me used to talking directly to people who are being assholes in public. It helps that we have a stop sign in front of our corner that everyone ignores.

fuckers!! I KILL THEM.

i hope maggie barked at them.

just read some interesting work on this topic:

Melson, Gail F. Why the Wild Things Are: Animals in the Lives of Children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2001.

chapter 7, "victims and objects," discusses animal abuse by children.

Aggression is the outward expression of inner suffering. These kids are suffering from who knows what (abuse at home, a repressive system that has dismissed them as useless "asswipes", or whatever), so they act aggressively. It's not limited to kids either, as Urbpan shows. He was suffering (feeling sympathy for the ducks, I'm guessing) and showed it by being aggresive with the kids.

It's a very human reaction. Comes out of the Amygdala, I believe.

Oh, and I might have to put that book on my already larger-than-life reading list. Thanks!

Also, serious lack of empathy training is a culprit, imo.

Once I had a rat named Amygdala. I named her when she was very young, before she developed a personality. I chose Amygdala because it's a lovely word.

She turned out to be a fear biter.

Remind me to never name my child Psychokiller.

Last summer while visiting my sister, I came across some 7 or 8 year old boys with a batch of 2 or 3 week old kittens. They were carrying them in a bucket, and right before my eyes (though I don't suspect they knew I was watching) each took a kitten and started hurling it into the air as far as they could. I flipped out. Ran into the yard, snatched each kitten from their hands, told them they should be ashamed of themnselves, and took the kittens away. When I got back to my sister's house, I asked her if she knew this family down the street. She did, she knew the phone number, too, so I called, spoke to the mother, who said "oh yeah, they can be a bit rough, blah, blah...not really getting my point...so when I haung up, my sister and I snuck back down there and stole the mother cat, too.

I hate it when people don't instill the value of life into their children!

BTW: I found homes for ALL the kittens and the mother!

(And I kept one myself - my beautiful black Lillith!)

omfg. time to throw some kids up into the air!!

fjdiosjfiodsaj;ijfds

You rock one hell of a lot for rescuing the kitties.

Thanks. Wish I could do more. but...at least I know 4 cats in this world have good homes, because of me!

"I hate it when people don't instill the value of life into their children!"

Wait, I thought cats were robots! You mean they are alive?

Yeah...I think a lot of people are under that very impression. Cats are like disposable cameras to them.

Sickos.

Yeah, it's sort of a common theme in this society of ours to treat anything that isn't in our small circle of "us-ness" as disposable or at least not important. For some folks that circle is very small. For others that circle is about as big as the circumference of the planet. Most people are somewhere in between.

Where do you draw the line for your circle?

Well, I'm an environmental engineer, so my circle pretty much encompasses the entire earth, and then some. ; )

Yep!

Though I have to admit that while my own circle extends pretty far outwards, it doesn't extend inside my body far at all. If someone else starts getting a little too close to being inside me (that grain moth larva in my couscous, for example), or me being inside it (that snapping turtle maybe), I'm less likely to think of it as one of us, and more likely to think "Hey, get away from me you, you evil thing!"

I know that lots of people only include individuals with brains, or even only ones with self-awareness in their circles. And I know Dennis Leary only includes cute, furry people in his circle of us-ness. He's got a funny skit about omnivores and how arbitrary it is that we humans will happily eat cows, but would be highly offended to eat, say, otters with their adorable little paws. (The whole, huge routine is here (http://jorgen.nu/ncfc/06_meat.asp) - for the otter part so a search on that page for "otter", it's a little over halfway down.)

Oh, and someone told me that viruses aren't exactly living things. So that may let me off the hook when I take lots of vitamin C when I get the Flu...

And ticks. I don't include THEM in my care circle.

I'm with you on the moth larvae in the cous cous bit, too. I feel the same.

When we lived in Texas, we lived near a bayou with a lot of Muscovy ducks around. Our town was a bird sanctuary by city ordinance which made it illegal to harass birds. I would tell little asshat kids that were harassing the ducks that what they were doing was illegal and I would threaten to call the police on them.

There was one time as a kid that I didn't say anything in response to senseless destruction of life. I was at camp when some kids found this huge freshwater mussel. It was beautiful. They brought it back to camp and proceeded to bash it to pieces. I didn't say a word. I just stood there and felt sick. I suppose if I was a super hero, that would be my defining moment in my self-imposed mission to protect the world from litter and animal abuse.

I get so worked up about things like that, that I can't keep my cool enough to convince them to change their ways.
The other day two people were walking ahead of me on the way home from class and one purposefully threw her tim hortons cup on the ground.
I yelled, "Hey! You dropped something!" and she and her friend glanced back and kept walking. I couldn't think of the right thing to say and I just ended up yelling, "PIG!" as I picked up her litter. So mature eh?

I need to prepare a lecture ahead of time for these situations.

But sometimes childish insults are the only thing these idiots understand! Ya did good! The word "pig" will probably ring in her ears for a few days and perhaps she'll think twice befroe littering again.

Sorry, the above post was from me.

"But sometimes childish insults are the only thing these idiots understand!"

Does anyone really ever understand childish insults? I periodically get called a moron, asshole, fat ass, bitch, and a bunch of other very colorful terms, and I never really know what these people are trying to tell me other than I somehow don't fit into their world the way they want me to.

And hey, I'd be happy to be called a pig, they're so cute and smart!

"I yelled, "Hey! You dropped something!"

I love that line. You could follow it up by picking up the litter and handing it to them. I've done that.

I definitely would have but they were too far away. I love that line too.

I've done that with bags of dogshit before.

YOU ROCK!!! ;)

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Exchange in the park

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It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!

Re: It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!

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I'm a pig!

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