Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 15, 2012

… actually … rat has some good advice here … for most of us …

Rat doesn’t buy it

We did fly alone though. I would fly to another State to see my grandparents every summer since I was in 5th grade. Don’t know what that has to do with parenting though…it is the strangeness of people and the ideas and imagination they have that have gotten worse (not that it wasn’t there before) and thus we have to even be concerned more about our doors being locked, or even where we as adults are at when it is evening/night.

Well, you did leave yourself wide open, Stephan.

You know, its kinda strange, and now I feel kinda old for being able to say this, but I do remember the days when parents let us fly across country by ourselves… though admittedly my parents didn’t let us stay home for hours, didn’t get to do that really until I was in College.

Good news! My 80-year old mother let me post this!

Rat is ‘rat on’ on this one…and my name speaks for us both.

My parents trusted their kids to stay at home alone while they worked, or ran errands, or whatever. The rule was “Don’t open the door to anyone who isn’t family.” (There was a window right by the front door, and you could see through the sheers without being seen.)These days they’d probably be cited for “neglect.”

First time I ever flew…I flew across country and out of it on my way to Viet Nam The Goverment sent me not my parents.

Pig is unusually uppity today to cartoon-Pastis. I think he’s been hanging around with Rat too much!Yeah, when I was a kid we did not (have to) lock our house doors at night. Today, that neighborhood where I once lived is plagued with gang shootings and murders. The times change, and we change with them….

Just because we have more fear does not mean that we are less safe. Our country is far safer today than ever before. The good old days really were not that good.

Actually there were a ton of things we used to be able to do that kids these days aren’t allowed to do because their “too dangerous.” Or it’s simply better to overmedicate the kids to make sure they behave.

When I was young you could see a couple of young girls walking home by themselves from a Friday night football game. I doubt if anyone allows that anymore.

For once, that dumb Pig makes sense.

“Normal people scare me.”(I saw that on a t-shirt yesterday.)

Back in the ‘50s at lunch time I’d run home for lunch. That way I could watch My Little Marge and Life With Elizabeth and with the commercials I’d be back before the bell. Nowadays kids can watch thrash on their phones.

My kids have a flat spot on the back of their heads, as do I. My dad also had one. Genetics at work.

Stephan, you’re using a rat and a farm animal to criticize yourself. Think about that.

Same thing here in the USA….I have seen kids who travle alone have a chaperone (usuallly a flight attendant), or have a special nametag

They are picking on the weird Guy.

I love how Rat is raising one eyebrow.

Don’t you start, Pig.

Poor Steph!

xxx

Now days people are so safe that you can’t do anything without worrying about getting hurt but without all the safety equipment if people used common sense you wouldn’t need it. I never got hurt riding a bike without a helmet, nor jumping on a trampoline, now days if you don’t wear a helmet when doing those things people think your being unsafe and try to report a parent to the state.

Stephan, you are okay, I’m okay, everyone’s okay – we all have a little craziness in us. You just happen to make yours more public than most of us. Love Rat’s expression that says, “if you really turned out okay, would you be drawing this cartoon and hanging out with the characters?”.Today is the day of helicopter parenting and kids are not better from the over-protection. How can kids learn from their mistakes and failures?

Why would today’s parents let their kid fly alone on a plane when chances are there’s a terrorist on it too? A few generations ago most people left their doors unlocked, too. As times change parents must change with them in order to protect their children.

Okay, someone step on the rat!

George: Gracie, did the nurse drop you on your head a lot?Grace: Oh George! You know my family couldn’t afford to have a nurse! – Da dum dum! – Mother had to do it!

I remember as a kid and even teenager, riding my bicycle just about everywhere, including two-a-days for football. You don’t see many kids riding their bikes around these days which is probably a bigger contributor to growing obescity than all the things the food police and PETA want to regulate.

When I was six to eight years old in Pittsburgh, I used to walk several blocks to school (including along the streetcar tracks) and go to lovely Dormont Park by myself. Now in the little Wisconsin village where my grandchildren live, you can look online and see where the child molesters are. Also there’s an anarchist living about three quarters of a mile away, near the center of town, who has blown a huge crater in his yard.

I would say that the changes are a combination of new technology, better information, over-protectiveness, laziness, and some aspects of society changing for the worse. New technology and better information are probably the biggest factors – when I was a kid, child seats didn’t exist, and if bicycle helmets existed they were only used by hard-core cyclists, and if a child on the other side of the country was abducted, we knew nothing about it. Nowadays, if anything bad happens anywhere, we’re aware of it minutes after it happens, so the world seems scarier than it really is. On the whole, I’d say that society has changed for the better over time (particularly if you’re a minority), but some things have gotten worse – the emptying of the mental institutions in the 80s had some undesirable effects (imagine that!), and technology changes have made it easier for some loonies to wreak their havoc. But there’s definitely a laziness component, too – as a kid I walked 0.64 miles each way to elementary school, 0.62 miles to junior high, and 1.12 miles to high school, and I was certainly never driven. Safety factors aside, it’s hard to imagine a whole lot of kids these days walking more than a quarter mile.

When teaching my kids how to drive I would tell them, “You’re not the only idiot on the road”. I didn’t say this to be mean, just that a lot of otherwise normal people do idiotic things while driving, myself included. So be a cautious driver, and, like Murphy, assume the worst that can happen, will happen. Plan for it to happen and think of a way of avoiding it if it does.

I was sent to visit my aunt and uncle once around 1978 or so…. It was a 6 hour ride on a bus – had no problems and finished a book I started that morning.I sat alone and made certain of it by keeping my backpack on the seat next to me, the bus never got more than half full the entire time I was on it, and no one bothered or spoke to anyone one they didn’t come with. It was sort of strange all these people and hardly anyone said anything to anybody for six hours.

Try that on a six hour airline flight some time…..

Rat once again defies who he is.

Rat also raises a brow, because why would HE belive

Pastis’ story.

I live near Dallas and see all the bad things happen through the news and have always thought how unsafe parts of the city are. But right now I am working in Meixco, in the state of Veracruz (home to some of the Zeta Cartel) and see just what unsafe is. We are driven around by armed guards, cannot go anywhere accept work or the hotel due to recient kiddnappings. I see things are far, far worse than home and far, far worse than our government would like us to think about our neighbors to the south.

Personally I wouldn’t mind turning out like Pastis ;)