Nice matters?

I’ve been very kindly given another award, the ‘nice matters’ award, from Laurie over at Just One Sheep. She outed herself in my comments as otherwise she’s known by the very scary moniker ‘Threat Assessment and Response Canada’ which is a Toronto crime blog that I wish existed here in my area. It’s quite un-nerving reading but also riveting, even for an ex-Torontonian like myself.

Nice does matter, of course however I do worry that this is never going to sink into the small hard ball of matter that is the Spud’s head. He greeted our friends’ nine-month-old girl with several large taps to her head and followed up by a serial stealing of her toys yesterday; and, while he appears to realise that ‘no’ means Mummy is upset (but heck, who only knows why?), for the most part he is yet to connect the word and gesture with the concept ‘oops, better stop fiddling with the cat food’. Hence, he is still menacing the cat, the cat’s food and any electronic item unfortunate enough to exist within the same square mile. This, despite copious uses of the word ‘no’, the gesture for ‘no’ and all sorts of other new-parenting-type alternatives such as exclaiming ‘but Sammy will go hungry. Why don’t you play with this?' {moves Spud to other room, offers wholesome wooden toy, is spurned and spends rest of afternoon fishing Spud’s fingers out of the cat’s bowl}.

It’s a worry. One spends one’s time trying to be a reasonably decent human being despite one’s rampaging inner urges and finally, having made it through cough cough forty cough odd cough years one pushes out a new human who has NO idea what it can possibly mean to be polite or nice or to share his toys. Back when I were a young ‘un (any sentence referring to one’s youth has to be said in a Northern accent… blame Monty Python) society as a whole was fairly polite and after some serious mind washing instruction from my parents it was easy to play along as there were examples of good manners all around. Now, however, it seems as though it will be impossible to teach the spud any sort of manners when there are grown adults in the playground (as there were yesterday) who themselves are sitting on the playthings and not getting off even when a circle of babies has formed around them crying and reaching out their arms. OK, so I exaggerate but I don’t see how that Mum yesterday could have sat for so long on the motorbike rocking toy with all those little boys around her watching hopefully while her own daughter ran up the slide pushing other kids out of her way and kicking them on her way down. I’m sorry but some people are appalling and, with those sorts of examples, it’s no wonder the spud can’t understand why manners are so important. Oh, that and he’s er, only one year old… but you get my drift.

It’s quite a wake-up call watching the behaviour of some people in the playground. While most parents smile at each other and at least give the pretence that they are teaching their children sharing and caring, there are some who are actively in there encouraging their little ones to be first, to be fastest, to stay on longest. These children then spend their time wrecking the park for all the other children, who then have to act in the same dreadful way just to get a trip down the slide. They then go on to menace others - and so on and so on until 20 years later they're pushing each other to get on the tube first and everyone's miserable.

Nice should matter to everyone, I guess. Another martini, bartender - and one for yourself.