The ME! ME! ME! Generation Sans Birth Control
The ME! ME! ME! Generation Sans Birth Control
Just got an e-mail, subject line: "Really...your Cougar-ass on TV this morning." (I was on Los Angeles' KTLA TV this morning, talking about my op-ed on underparented children on planes, and about my book.) Here's what the guy wrote:
In a message dated 11/25/09 9:17:58 AM, secretboyfriend1@hotmail.com writes:Are you that old and lonely that you have no patience for human kind. I understand, but I simply think you just need a stiff rogering from a good man (or woman) and let off some of that middle age tension.
I thought a simple fuck you would suffice, but you might have thought me rude.
But... fuck you anyway.Enjoy life alone.
See you on a flight with my 2 yr old soon.
Xo
SB
My response:
Thanks so much for your kind thoughts. I have a boyfriend, and saw him last night, although the only hot thing he gave me was a huge container of chicken soup, which he drove all the way across town to bring me from Cantor's Deli, because I was coming down with a cold.As for you, do you walk up to people in public and spread your particular brand of cheer, or do you stick to doing it the weenie way, sending anonymous insulting e-mails to people over the Internet?
I'm 45, not lonely at all, and no matter how old I get, I'll never be "patient" enough to be able to stomach people like you.
And let's get this straight: You're angry at me because I suggest that it's important for people to be respectful of others? Kindly avoid reproducing again.
-Amy Alkon
Frankly, even if I were the ugliest woman in the world, you don't get to choose your looks; you do get to choose your behavior, and whether you parent your children or whether you let them have their feral little run of other people's lives.
I talked to my mom this morning about all the online commenters on the LA Times piece who've been saying they should call my parents and find out what I was like as a child. My mom would be fine with that (remember, she called my car thief and chewed him out for stealing my car).
She remarked on how I used to go to temple with her, to services, and sit there quietly in my little dress and Mary Janes. She contrasted this with a family that often sits behind her now: the little girl STANDS on the velvet seats and makes noise during services (and is not quieted by her parents) and even listens to her iPod during the service. Her parents don't stop her or even seem to care. My mother just can't believe it.
Welcome to "parenting." I'm sensing a need to move to out-of-the-way rural areas when all the results of it come of age.
| More from Amy Alkon
Stumble It!
I guess I was lucky but I never had that problem with my son in church, a restaurant or anywhere else but I was always careful in how I disciplined my son while in public so that I never received a visit from child welfare. Other parents weren't so lucky and very nearly had their child taken away from them for doing what they had to do to make their little darlings mind them in public…Sad to say but if that mom had done what she needed to do to make her son sit quietly in his seat on that plane; chances are that child welfare would have been waiting to take her son from her and charge her with child abuse. Thanks to the flight attendant and the pilot who would have reported it as such.
Your mother's generation of which my mother is also a member was one of the most abusive towards their own children while like my mother the choices many of them made and the lifestyles they lived in front of their children were morally repugnant. Which is why many of these abused children and their friends gravitated into social services after they grew up and began cracking down on abusive parents. However, like all such social cycles the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction hence the lack of true parenting seen primarily among women in this day and age. But don't worry it will get a lot worse before it gets any better.