That Infuriating Fuck-Up Kid

I like being a Scout leader. My dad did it when I was a kid, and I remember my time with him doing this fondly. I remember he did a lot of cool stuff with me and the Scouts, as the pack leader to boot. He was a busy guy, a really busy professional guy, but he took that on and did a great job . . . Wow, am I just now recognizing that I'm trying to emulate my dad in doing this, that I'm maybe trying to re-create the pride I have in my father now with my own son, planting the seeds now of future memory? Whatever . . . all I know is that I like being with my boy and doing Scout stuff, teching him and a handful of his buddies about stuff they would not otherwise know. And I even pick up things along the way. They seem to enjoy the time we spend together, and the parents seem grateful, too.

But every time we have a meeting that's attended by this one kid, I come home and have to rant to the wife about him. As indelicately as I can make this, the kid is a fuck-up. He's not a nerd or a dork or a spaz or a dweeb, not a jerk or a twit, or even a terror or a horror. He's just a fuck-up, that's it. His pattern of fuck-up-ness is basically set for life already, at the age of 7 he's set for an entire lifetime of fuck-up-itude. This kid is an idiot, a sadly ignored little jackass who thinks he's funny and cool, and doesn't have the tact or basic politeness to sit and listen to someone trying to help him out, or the brains to sort through what might be useful to him and then take it onboard. He's never been taught any manners, and it's clear he does whatever he wants to do at home, and expects the same kind of treatment everywhere he goes. It's obvious he gets no parental attention, especially the crucial "no you may not..." kind. The kid drives me absolutely nuts, every time I encounter him.

And why is this kid this way? It's Mom and Dad, of course. They don't give a shit about the kid, and that much is obvious. They're too into their own thing, what they're doing and have scheduled. Mom called me one Saturday to apologize that he didn't make it to a Scout event, so sorry that Kid didn't come to the Saturday event because, after all, she had a scheduled coffee with her girlfriends, and there was, you know, just no way she'd miss that. Not the slightest bit of creativity on the part of the parents in getting what the boy might want or need, not the slightest bit of putting aside the adult selfishness for the sake of the child. Not the slightest bit of realization that what we do now creates the future of our children. Who knows if he'll remember this when he's 40, but I can guarantee that Mom and Dad probably wouldn't want him to remember how their event was more important than his on a Saturday morning.


This is kind of what I'm working with, except in a small 7 year-old.

Hell, the kid shows up to meetings with food and dirt on his face, and dirty clothes, dirty shoes. No jacket. His parents don't even check him to see if he's presentable before he leaves the house. His hands are dirty, all the time, making him look just plain grubby. His uniform is a joke, a hand-me-down from an older brother, and Mom and Dad have done nothing to get the uniform in order. The kid was awarded advancement patches for his uniform over 7 months ago, and they still haven't been sewn on. The patches are iron-on, and they haven't even been ironed on. The Korean cleaner/tailor is right up the street, and can get those patches on in the space of two days, for only a slightly expensive $7.00 each. I have sent out reminder after reminder about how the uniform is to be configured and worn, and this kid never looks right. No, I don't expect him to do this himself; I expect his parents to do it for him, and to have him help or to at least learn from it. After all, this is part of Scouts, learning to wear a uniform, take pride in appearance, take pride in accomplishments, that kind of thing. This kid takes pride in nothing but his stupid attempts at clowning around, his lame attempts to hang with the boys who are much more mature and clued-in than he is. His parents' actions show me they have no pride in him, and he therefore has none in himself.

I've told him again and again how to wear the uniform, how to put on his hat, to tuck in his shirt, to buckle his belt, all of these things, and he never does it. He just ignores me, which is another indicator of what his parents have taught him, more correctly have not taught him. It's always starting from scratch, every meeting. The only difference from last year is the color of his uniform and scarf now. It's like talking to a wall with this kid. Damn, he can't even remember, a 2nd grader now at age 7, which hand to salute and shake with, the difference between his right and his left. He doesn't even know how to tie his shoes.

And last night was the kicker. Mom storms back in to the school cafeteria after the den meeting had broken up, about 4 parents and 4 boys left, literally flushed with her belligerent, righteously indignant attitude, puffing herself up for the confrontation, demanding, just flat-out demanding everyone return to the cafeteria. I was immediately worried, thinking there was a safety problem in the parking lot, maybe the horsing-around boys broke something in the school office foyer. Nope, not so. A couple of the boys had called her son a nickname, and she and the son didn't like it. Okay, bad nicknames can be cruel, and I was set for the worst. Nope, not the case at all. It wasn't even vulgar or derogatory, just an exceedingly common and alliterative nickname linking the kid's common name to a very popular national-chain food product. And she got all bent out of shape about that. My first reaction was to say, "This company and its slogan were around 7 years ago when your son was named--by you and your husband--didn't you think that this might eventually come up?" but instead I looked each boy in the eye, told them appropriately seriously enough to please not call him that name anymore, and that was that. Ugly little confrontation over, crisis averted.

But seriously. If you name your kid Bart, he's going to be called "Fart." If you name your kid Cletus, it'll be "penis" and eventually probably some kind of derivation of "clitoris." If you name your kid Richard, he's a dick and a dicky for life. If your daughter is Prudence, she'll be a prude and a prune. If she's Penny, she'll be Skinny Penny, whatever. If you name your kid William, he'll be a willy and a willie and a Billy and a silly willy Billy-boy and any other idiotic permutation you can come up with. If you name your kid Zarflorflington, he'll be "Barf-lorflington" before he hits third grade. This is the nature of kids, of people. They make these aural and mental connections automatically, it's what humans do, recognize and discern and create patterns. (Hell, what's the worst is to be so invisible, so meaningless as to not have a nickname. If you've got one, at least they know you're around, and are paying attention, some kind of attention to you.) These things come out whether bidden or not. It's absolutely inevitable. So if you name your kid after a major US national-chain food product, then what in the holy hell do you expect once he starts to grow up? You should be smart enough to think ahead and know it's coming. If you and the boy don't like it, then develop strategies to deal with it. Or don't name him that in the first place. Just think of the kid named Chuck, eh?

And you can guarantee, I didn't have to say a word to the four other boys sitting in that cafeteria when Mom made her huffy little rant about her boy's name. Even at 7 and 8, they're certainly old enough to see how Mommy came charging to his stupid defense, ordering them to leave her little baby alone. I watched the other boys, my son included, giving each other looks, communicating wordlessly what they thoght about the situation. So, which is worse, telling people to stop calling your boy a harmless nickname, or jumping in there and demonstrating to everyone, boy and adult alike, that he's a spoiled little mama's boy? Yeah, she did more damage in his defense than if he'd just taken the good-natured ribbing, and in the process matured a bit, and in turn even gained some respect from the other boys. How is she going to shield him at school the next day from the name-calling? How is she going to protect him when he's a 17 year-old high school student? How is she going to live for him when he's an adult? Let the boy grow up on his own; anticipate and plan, and help him out with ways to deal with what you know is coming, then let him live his life on his own, and accept that sometimes it'll be painful or unpleasant. That's parenting, and that's the nature of growing up. It's not all sweetened cereal and Disney cartoons.

I can't think of any other kid, in all my interactions in Scouts or in kiddie sports that I just want to grab and get him clued-in. I want to grab him by the collar, look him in the eye and tell him to get his shit together, shape up, and start growing up. No hitting, but a good jerk, maybe a shake or two, to get his goddamn attention and get him into the mode of paying attention. I really believe that's all it would take with this kid, to be jarred and forced to mature with the rest of the crew. Why do you think he was picked on last night? Because he's a grubby, baby-talking fuckup who can't dress himself and who doesn't know right from left, who wears his uniform worse than the 1st graders do, and who doesn't seem to care about any of these things. And Momma got upset by this with her little rampage, breathless, red-faced, all about the hated nickname she and Dad unthinkingly put on the kid when they filled out his birth certificate? She gets upset by that!?

One less kid for mine to compete with.