Shirlee Smith | Let’s Blame Santa

Smart-mouth kids aren’t really popular at any time of the year but something about the Christmas Season tends to bolster their ability to be obnoxious.

Do their parents think they’re cute? Must be or they would snatch ‘em back to “staying in their place.”

And, yes, I think children have a “place” as do all the rest of us. No matter how distasteful the boss may be, the employee, if they wanna keep their job, knows how to behave, that is to say, stay in their place.

The creepy kid who darted in front of my car in the Whole Foods parking lot and then quickly halted giving me the look of “hey I own this asphalt, the aisles in the store and why in the hell is your car driving in the parking lot, anyway.”

Upon looking up from her “dumb-phone”, the mom screeched a stupid command that Ms Kid ignored.

Once inside the store the same family ( mom still on the phone, the darting kid, and two younger ones) gave signals as to who they really were.

The darting kid was pretending, I guess, to be a traffic guard with arms outstretched blocking whatever aisle she was traveling on.

With back-up accompaniment provided by the younger members of the clan, Ms Darter demanded all matter of items to be placed in the grocery cart.

Maybe, I thought to myself, this is just seasonal behavior due to the privilege of many people asking each of these unpleasant children what they wanted for Christmas.

Maybe, I wondered, did what I was witnessing play to the tune of kids having a Christmas Wish List.

As fortune, or better called mis-fortune, would have it, the gruesome bunch was behind me in the check-out line.

I heard mom tell the youngest of the clan, who had wandered off somewhere in the store but was now linking back up with the clan, “Santa doesn’t like that – he wouldn’t know where to find you to deliver your presents.”

“YES he can,” Smart-mouth shouted back in a rude and demanding tone and then went on to add that Santa found the house last year.

Now, maybe I’m just hard on parents who wanna make Santa responsible for doing the job they ought to do.

Would Santa be blamed, if because mom wasn’t holding her kids hand in the parking lot, the kid was hit by a car?

Little ones wandering throughout any store, unaccompanied by the adult who brought them there is what I would call a level of child endangerment.

Neither Christmas wishes or Santa’s ho, ho, ho, can explain away this kind of parental neglect.

Smart-mouth kids are a direct result of derelict parenting no matter the season.