"You're Gonna Carry That Weight"

In light of the previous post, this one seems more...poignant, perhaps? No, sadder, more disturbing; yes, that's it.

I was at Wal-Mart awhile ago, picking up some random groceries to tide me over until I go home this weekend and raid the cupboard while mom and dad are out of town (hey, I was told to...mom said she specifically left some food for me, so there). Anyway, I'm wandering down the chip aisle, thinking of caving to my craving for Pringles. As I amble, I come across a mother and her young son (around 10 or so). To establish the scene:

Wal-Mart, for reasons I do not fully fathom, puts the Slim Fast-type stuff right next to the potato chips. Same damn aisle. It's like a way to test and annoy people, I think. Here we have me, ambling down the aisle in my sandals (which are shoes that're naturally predisposed to creating a shuffling gait, I've noticed--everyone shuffles and drags their feet in sandals. But I digress). The mother appears to be late-30s, slightly heavyset, but not disgustingly so. Her son, as previously mentioned, was about ten...and was a plump little butterball. "Rounded" is a term that comes to mind. Now, at the age of ten, most kids are kinda stretched out a little more, not so compressed, and pretty scrawny in their post-babyfat years. Not so this child. Not only was the babyfat still there, it'd been joined by childfat.

Now, the mother is standing there with her child, talking with him and holding a box. As I get closer, I see that it's a box of Slim Fast snack bar things. As I take a sudden interest, I hear that she's trying to convince him to try them. This gave me pause--a woman thought her son was overweight enough that he needed to take Slim Fast.

My response--which I sadly kept to myself--was "don't give the kid Slim Fast! Get his fat ass outside and make him run around for awhile instead of playin' freakin' videogames all day!"

Now I'll be the first to admit--as I did earlier today--that I'm rather overweight myself. But my response to this is to exercise and try to watch what I eat better (yeah, I know, the Pringles aren't the best idea for that, but hey--I rode the bike around campus twice this afternoon in the 100 degree heat index, so I think I deserve a bit of a treat...plus, I'm quitting soda pop tomorrow cold turkey). I tried Slim Fast a couple of years ago. All it did for me was leave me feeling hungry every night. The way those damn things help you lose weight is that they replace a full meal with a 200 calorie drink. If you reduce the number of calories you're taking in per meal that drastically, of course you'll freakin' lose weight! You don't have to drink the damn shakes or whatever, just drink a big glass of water or eat a bowl of plain rice instead.

But I think it says something that the woman's response to the problem of her child's weight wasn't to address the root of the issue--his lack of exercise and the fact that he probably drinks soda pop every day and eats too much fast food--but to attempt a band-aid cure for the symptoms. Most of American society is like that right now, I think. We see violence in schools, and our response isn't to wonder what psychological reasons are there for these children to want to shoot their classmates, but to look at the videogames these kids were playing or the music they were listening to. I've been playing violent videogames, listening to angsty music, and watching sex and violence on TV and in the movies for about two decades now, give or take, and I'm sure as hell not about to go out and shoot up my school (though don't think it's not tempting, as assanine as the OU administration is sometimes). Videogames don't make children violent. Nor does music, television, or movies. No, these things have the chance of bringing out violence in those who have such tendencies already, but are not in and of themselves the cause of said violence. People were brutally murdering each other long before videogames came into existence. The root of that problem--and the root of the overweight kid at Wal-Mart's problem--lies with the parents, and the fact that parents are not paying enough attention to their damn kids. If parents would take notice of what sorts of things their children are interested in--the games they want to play, the music they listen to, the movies they see, the people they hang out with--then maybe, just maybe, parents would be able to catch issues before they become problems. In short, parents ought to be parents, and exercise a bit of interest and control in their childrens' lives. Letting kids be "free" is one thing, but that sort of hippy clap-trap taken to an extreme by conservative limp baby boomers who are too damn busy counting their money to notice their kid is messed up in the head need a swift kick in the ass.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Elliot Smith, "Alameda"