Grown-Ups Behaving Badly

Lately I’ve seen a couple examples of what I think of as adult brats. These are people who have never passed the development of, say, that of an 11-year old.

To wit: this weekend we went to a water park hotel. The water area was quite large but it was packed filled with screaming kids and their parents. The sound of bass-heavy pop music pulsed beneath it all. The adults filled the whirlpool and perched on the sides, squawking and stepping on one another, like penguins in a wildlife documentary. The kids and I hung out in the smaller, kiddie area; next to it was a larger area with two huge slides and a “lazy river.” Now, to use the lazy river you needed a tube. There were none to be found. But I did notice several people cruising along with more than one tube. Finally, I asked a woman if I could have her extra tube. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m saving it for my husband. He went to get another drink.”

“By all means, lady,” I said. “The whole idea behind the water park is for you – an adult – to cruise down the ersatz river, drinking a beer while little children shiver at poolside, tears coursing down their cheeks.”

What I really said was, “Okay.”

One day last summer I was at the playground with son H. when there was a mom’s group was there, perched on the swings. I waited for awhile, played with H. on the slide and the see-saw, biding my time.  Finally H. got impatient. “Hwing! Hwing!” he said.

So I approached them. “Excuse me. My son really wants to swing. Can you move your fully-grown behinds off the swings – the ONLY swings in the park – that my 5-year old, AUSTISTIC SON has been circling for the last HALF HOUR?” And they said, “God, I’m so sure,” and they clicked their tongues at me and rolled their eyes, and slowly got up and wandered away.

Or maybe it just seemed like they did.

You know, my parents used to take me and my sister to a winter hotel-getaway occasionally so we could swim in the pool. “Don’t drown,” my mom would instruct helpfully, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke at us as she headed toward the lounge. And off we’d go.

You see, kids, that’s just the way it was back then. You didn’t have to fight adults for child resources. They didn’t want to swim or swing. They wanted to be doing mysterious adult things. And we got all the tubes to ourselves.