Clowns and Penises: A Message to Overbearing Parents

What a precious child.

Please stop showing me pictures of your baby.

The first fifty pictures of your little bundle of joy were all pretty much the same. If you’re going to inundate me with this barrage of maternal pride, at least mix it up a little. Dress the kid up like a gladiator or a pirate; give me a reason to at least feign interest.

I know you believe every human on the planet desires to see endless streams of photos of your child. You believe we have an innate need to gush over your child, and shower him or her with flowery praise.

We do not.

What people say: what a beautiful baby you have.

What people are actually thinking: holy crap your baby looks like a lizard: his skin is weird and his face is all smushed. Is his father a sleestack?

Daddy?

The ugly truth: children grow up to be people and people suck. In fact, I know your kid’s father and he’s a jackass. That poor kid’s wading out of a gene pool that’s shallow, stagnant, and filled with parasites.

And stop acting like everything your child does is precious.

Your child dumped mustard in the fish tank: not precious.

Your child shaved the dog: not precious.

Your child peed on the cat: not precious

Your child got into the permanent markers and covered your living room wall with what appeared to be clowns and penises: honestly, this one’s funny.

And keep that notion in your head that it is advantageous to never discipline your child, because who doesn’t love a good “my child did the cutest thing in juvenile court today” story.

Maybe if Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents had made him eat his vegetables, things would have turned out differently.

Let’s all get together and stop praising our children for things that are clearly not praiseworthy.

Your child’s artwork is dreadful. It’s fine to hang it on your fridge with a due amount of parental pride. Just don’t expect me to gush over it like it’s the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Seriously, from what I can tell, it’s a drawing of a clown and a penis on the back of a misshapen unicorn. (And I’m starting to sense a disturbing trend in your child’s art work involving clowns and penises.)

Do you know what happens when you constantly praise your child for things at which she’s bad? She wastes three years at college majoring in art, when what she actually excels at is smoking pot, wearing berets, growing copious amounts of body hair, and doodling clowns and penises.

Then she comes home with a giant face tattoo, and informs you she’s dropped out of college to focus on her poetry. (Dreadful scribblings that mainly focus on clowns, penises, and when she’s ambitious: clown penises.)

Then when she can’t get anyone to publish any of her poems about clowns and penises, she tries to find a real job and the following happens:

Interviewer: Your application seems fine, and we’d like to hire you, but there’s the issue of your face tattoo.

Her: What do mean? This tattoo is an expression of me and who I am.

Interviewer: I’m not saying it’s not a brilliant tattoo of a clown and a penis riding a unicorn, but here at Chuck E. Cheese, I’m not sure it would fit our image.

Her: My mother says this tattoo is precious. She says everything I’ve ever done is precious. She even refers to me as “her precious.”

Interviewer: It also bothers us that your mother appears to be Gollum.

Mommy?

Let me be clear, I don’t think you should squelch the dreams and aspirations of children. You should squelch the delusions of overbearing parents.

And please please please stop pointing to your children and saying, “there’s our future.” There is enough scary shit in the world already.

The future?