I've Become "That" Parent

Okay, there are thousands of "that" parents. I've become the one that has kids with Food Issues (nut allergy in the case of Joffre, horrible reactions to whole wheat {upon which I won't elaborate} in the case of Alec). I had hoped to avoid it, but the threat of anaphylactic shock, or at least unspeakable diapers, changed all that.

I've also become the parent who sees other parents doing unfathomable things in public, and tut-tuts - occasionally audibly. Like the mother with a boy of about four or five at Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (swashbuckling horrors abound). And that's not the worst of it: it's bad enough to take little tiny children to see Pirates of the Caribbean, but to take them to Constantine? As I wrote in another blog after seeing Constantine in 2005:

"Constantine is a violent, scary movie. There are nasty demon possessions, violent exorcisms, people's faces melting off, graphic wrist-slashing images, grotesque shape shifting, death-by-having-flies-pour-out-of-one's-mouth-nose-and-eyes . . . oh, and a man forcibly drowns a woman. On top of all the usual flamethrowers, guns, and bloody, vicious fist fights. But, hey, that didn't stop the people two rows up from us from bringing their little kids to the movie. The children looked to be about 7 and 5 years old. The younger one spent the movie in her mom's lap, hiding her face, and at some point she dozed off. I saw the father reassuring the older one a few times. There was no crying, or anything, but for God's sake!! Who takes their little children to a movie like that??? Sure, these kids have probably been inoculated by having watched violent television since birth, but still. It took effort on my part not to walk up and comment. Not that it would have done any good."

And I finally succumbed, after the 547,621st "why?", to saying "because I said so!!"