Two things of WTFery

[narcasse]

This morning I opened my bedroom door to discover a teapot sitting patiently outside on the floor having been left as some sort of unexpected tribute. It’s actually the teapot I’ve been meaning to pick up for liyang but hadn’t gotten around to finding.
Occasionally my father revels in moments of surprising resourcefulness which are designed to confuse me, so the offering of a teapot is much like being silently handed some USB extension cable while I watched TV on the couch, only to have him attempt to take it away again when he was leaving the room.
I highly suspect that some monks will be getting USB extension cable soon as part of some offering packages too in the near future.


The other thing of WTFery is rather less entertaining but one of those troublesome nonsenses that leap out at you when you’ve almost forgotten about them.
I have, on occasion, been roped into giving advice on the matter of degree and university choices to the children of assorted families, sometimes at the behest the children in question themselves or their parents. For the most part I don’t mind discussing choices with people and giving any input if I have anything interesting or entertaining to say and most of the time it’s simply explaining to concerned parents that yes, their offspring will be able to find a job afterwards and yes, they’re quite sure that whichever course is what they want to do. No, their leaving home won’t turn them into casually alcoholic, occasionally German sprouting, arrogant PolSci sociopaths and so on.
Generally this sort of consultation isn’t really a problem and plenty of the time it’s easier all round if I go back and explain to parents that everything will be alright after discussion rather that someone have to try to get through to their own parents that they’re not going to run off to Japan the minute they’re let out of the house for longer than a month. If they do run off to Japan for a year with my Utena DVDs then I tend to get a little cranky but that’s another matter entirely.

For the most part this sort of thing usually means that I end up with a handful of queries over time and then more than likely, eventually offhanded reports on how things are going for them and how life is treating them which becomes normal conversation rather than my needing to give advice. Eventually I will have an entire generation’s worth of minions.
I don’t mind this at all; in fact it’s rather nice to be able to answer some of the questions that I could have done with having answered before I set off into the wide blue yonder.

The only problem arises when specific parents don’t agree with the choices that their offspring have made and then come back to me to ‘fix it’. There’s only so much that I can say, even if I do think said offspring is acting like an idiot and mostly they aren’t. In the one irritating case where they actually are, then it’s really out of my hands. I can’t say anything or do anything to suddenly make it right or whatever it is that the parents in question are expecting me to do. I’m sorry but your son is an idiot who has so many issues that if you even give him the time of day he’ll desperately hope that you’re his friend for life. I find him appallingly lacking in common sense or self-preservation or manners and desperately to be grasping after the next thing that he thinks is shocking. His ‘teenage rebellion’ is now carrying on into however old he must be by now and after a certain point I’d have thought he might have bought a clue.
Acting out like an idiot isn’t rebellion, it’s rather horribly predictable and what’s more, it achieves nothing because the person involved is too busy making a scene to prove how rebellious they are than actually looking for a solution to whatever their cause du jour is at the current time.
It’s boring. Did nobody ever teach these people that not all attention is good attention?

Alas, while this nonsense has all carried on the parents are busy being judgmental about the issue and instead of actually talking to their son are desperately trying to point fingers at every other reason that could be the cause of his behaviour. Perhaps the fact that he was pretty much ignored on one side and had money thrown at him, while the other told him he could do no wrong might have something to do with it?
And now once again they seem to be bringing the situation to my attention to sort it out.
I don’t like your son, I think he’s a fool and that the only things keeping him afloat are that he’s managed to retain some of his intelligence and that as parents you keep throwing money at the problem. He’s got issues, lots of them but they are not my responsibility. Don’t expect me to fix it because I don’t actually care anymore. Go find some bleeding heart liberal to deal with it because twelve years on, this kid is nothing of interest to me. I don’t think that he can even hold a civil conversation anymore.

Isn’t it amazing what a lack of parenting can accomplish?
And people wonder why for the most part I’m disinclined to deal with children.