David and I were born tail-end of the baby boom. After 20 years of boom, parents had gotten pretty fed-up with too many kids and right good at spankings. The decades of “children should be seen and not heard”–yep, we were still in them. Touch something you shouldn’t and “smack” your hand was hit by parent, aunt, teacher, or other adult with fly-swatter, stick, switch, ruler, or whatever tool capable of inflicting the most pain with the least real damage to a small child’s body. OK. Those were NOT the good ‘ole days at all. I recall “Don’t touch-don’t touch-don’t touch!” was the mantra running through my little 3 year old head with an occasional throbbing hand as a reminder as well.
However, the pendulum has swung way too far the other way. Now just about anything a child does which involves messing with strangers’ property seems to be encouraged by the parents even if the activity is entirely inappropriate. Two cases in point involve our tenders to Mahdee, the Merrimack canoe and the Tinker inflatable: Last September, whilst we were sailing down the California coast, we anchored at San Simeon and David took the canoe over to the beach, hauled it up high away from the shore where neither tides nor unruly children would likely touch it. The Merrimack canoe is lovely but delicate as it is a very lightweight fiberglass over thin cherry ribs and can be easily damaged. He set out on a hike and upon his return to the canoe found two small children (approximately 3 and 6 years old) running up the steep incline from the water and jumping in and out of the canoe while the parents, camera in hand, stood by and chuckled about how cute the antics of their little ones were. They were miffed when David told them to get their hooligans out of the canoe and that it wasn’t “cute” to play with other people’s stuff. The canoe actually suffered several small cracks in the cherry ribs during that playtime; I repaired it with epoxy and fiberglass this winter. A decade of use from wilderness canoe trips to tender duty for Mahdee hauling hundreds of pounds of water, coal, wood, and other stuff vs. the damage that 10 minutes of jumping children managed to do–amazing.
Yesterday, David took the Tinker inflatable to a nearby beach where he left if for many hours while he was off running errands. The Tinker has dinghy wheels which slide down along the transom and allow us to roll it onto shore high above the tide line and to keep the bottom off the scratchy rocks and sand. The transom sits 8″ above the wheels and the dinghy doesn’t manage to touch the ground until the bow so the entire plywood and rubber bottom is unsupported, just hanging in air. The wheels and their aluminum legs aren’t made to withstand the weight of anything other than the dingy itself but the system works quite well.
I was on “dinghy watch” meaning that if I saw something going on like, oh, say someone stealing it, I would make a ruckus and get a nearby boater to assist. Things generally don’t “happen” to dinghies left on this particular beach. We’ve anchored here many times and see dinghies safely sitting ashore. So, dinghy watch is really pretty much a joke. However, I was a little irritated yesterday when I saw a little toddler playing in the sand in and out of Tinker. I knew that the dinghy would be covered inside with sand and that we’d have to hoist and rinse out the boat with salt water and then wipe it dry with fresh water simply because of the little toddler playing there under the poor supervision of toddler’s mom. Yet another case of “isn’t my kid cute playing with other people’s stuff?” Can you imagine the same parent watching while the child climbed all over a strangers’ car in a parking lot? “Oh, how cute little Suzie is getting sand tracks on the hood and windshield. Oops there goes the windshield wiper?” Then, I was horrified when I saw Mom pick up little Suzie and plop herself down onto Tinker with the toddler in lap! Yikes, those aluminum legs are only held on with a couple little screws though the plywood transom. And further yikes, the dingy was partially deflated (in the hot sun we do this while we’re away to keep it from bursting) so the floor was in an even more delicate situation and could be damaged by heavy weight on or in it.
Since I’m pretty much stuck on Mahdee with this whole hip thing (not to mention the dingy is ashore…) I called a nearby boater, Don, and asked him to please go “shoo away” the pesky mother & toddler from Tinker. He kindly obliged, rowing to shore and telling the mother to remove herself and child from the Tinker. During his row to shore, I watched as mom poured saltwater over toddler’s feet IN THE DINGHY and wondered what kind of crazy people were out on the beaches today. Don kindly stood watch on the beach near to the Tinker for 15 minutes during which time Mom became uncomfortable enough to move herself and toddler away from the area. Thank goodness.
I love babies, I love toddlers, I love little kids, but seriously what is it with parents these days?
