Parental Harrassment

Wordsworth said,'the child is the father of man'. Little did he know how prohetic he was.Child abuse is a terrible problem. But kids are not angelic cherubins either. In todays age of children's rights and "proper child rearing", poor parents have their lives wrung out by brats.

Take the case of Sad-Teacher(ST) and her daughter Evil-Incarnate(let's call her Evie, for short). We students used to wonder how ST could bear our class. But a short excursion with Evie in the same train cleared our doubts. The worst batch of 20yr olds are nothing next to one full-fledged 8yr old brat. We were all running away when we saw her coming. A similar incident during a flight will clear all doubts. A family of four were travelling in the aisle seat just before ours. This family comprised of two very interesting specimens of parent-abusers. Specimen A- let's call him Drone Boy- seemed less harmful in comparison to his younger brother,Terror. While the tired family of the author tried vainly to catch some precious sleep- Terror was happily slapping his absolutely spineless,useless pater who was cowering in fear and busy making vague threats to return the favor. If only he'd turned around and breathed a syllable to any one of us- we'd have gladly slapped the kid. Ten times. Each one of us. Between the sounds of the thwacking slaps and the gleeful laughter of Terror, any sleep was a dream. Thankfully, all that slapping was tiring and the terrible Terror fell into unwilling sleep. The entire aisle area breathed a sigh of relief and closed their red-rimmed, sleep-ridden eyes. NOT FOR LONG. That's when Drone Boy kicked in. Ever been bothered by a humming mosquito, just as you were falling asleep? Well... mutiply that feeling to 100 raised to infinite! Half an hour or more of listening to that dismal,toneless,aggravating drone made us realise that Terror and Drone were weapons of mass destruction in the making. One is physical torture and the other is mental. Either way you end up dead.And then,there are the supermarket brats. We are all familiar with this parent harrassing menace. The piercing orders on the lines of "MUMMY I WANT THAT,MUMMY!" or better still the simple ear-shattering screams that make by standers look accusingly at the blameless parent.

Parents are a burdended race. (a) They have the kid/brat. (b) They are responsible for the child- Read: whatever the child does, it's the parents' fault. They are a maligned race and require representation. Someone has to speak up against the heartless attrocities committed against parents. Just because they bore doesn't mean they must bear. So the next time you see a brat abusing a poor defenceless parent, run to their rescue. After all it might be you tomorrow...