Thursday, January 18, 2007

how not to talk to a small child

Today as I was walking along a trail in Glen Canyon, one of the children from Lola's preschool saw a woman clipping the fur of her large, shaggy dog. (Incidentally this answered a question I've been pondering for some time, which is "where do those big clumps of hair come from? It's not the red-tailed hawks leavings' or there'd be bones in there. It's not human. What the hell is it and why is there so much of it?"). He ran up and asked her, full of beaming, friendly curiousity, "What are you doing to that dog?"

The woman, a middle-aged nondescript person, shouted at him (she seemed to be adapting the turn-up-the-volume approach stupid people have towards talking to foreigners to talking to children), "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm cutting his hair" rudely.

"Does that hurt him?" the little boy asked nicely enough.

The woman laughed snidely and shouted, "DID IT HURT YOU WHEN YOU HAD YOUR HAIR CUT?" (A more observant person would have noticed the long, shaggy hair on this child and realized he probably had no memories of having his hair cut). "DOES IT LOOK LIKE I'M HURTING HIM?" She gave a fake laugh and shook her head at the child's ignorance, muttering about what a stupid thing to ask.

How cold does someone have to be to be so rude to a polite child? Okay, littering dog-owner, so you won a war of words with a four year-old. I wouldn't place money on you outwitting seven year-old Iris Uber Alles, though.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I.U.A. -

CUT YOUR HUMANITY! CUT YOUR DIGNITY!!!

Anonymous said...

Was it this person?
http://www.geocities.com/roverscomb/

or maybe this?
http://www.mdnpd.com/pd/patty.htm

Anonymous said...

You should have:

A) Kicked her and opted to be a bad role model if only to serve justice

B) Told her to chill out and told the 4 year old that sometimes ladies are angry because the smell bad and it bothers them