I really try to avoid Kroger’s on Welfare Day.  I know people on food stamps have to go to the store too, but it seems they all show up on the first of the month.  Had I remembered that, I would have dragged my sorry carcass out of bed and gotten to Kroger’s on Sunday, even though I had promised myself an entire weekend in bed so I could lick my wounds from the previous week.   That is a saga in and of itself.  Suffice to say I will be weeks without my car and there is a certain sort of irony that I will be driving a black VW with North Carolina plates much longer than I truly care to.

Anyway, one way to make the trip to Kroger’s a bit more bearable is to play some good tunes (loud, to drown out the lame stuff they play in the store) so I had my selection of Metallica MP3’s going on.  This was well and good until I get to the check out and there is this obnoxious little brat- five or six, and definitely old enough to know how to behave in public,  in line ahead of me.  He was screeching and kicking his mother in the shins (something I would have handily backhanded my own offspring for doing, had he ever even thought to have the balls to act like that in public) which was bad enough.  But when I can hear him screeching over James Hetfield, the rest of Metallica, and the San Francisco Symphony performing “Battery,” this is over the top.  It took all my restraint to keep my mouth shut, and to keep my hands from throttling the little bastard.

It’s not that I particularly hate children.  I am mildly misanthropic at best- especially in Kroger’s on Welfare Day, when it seems someone’s fat ass is always square in front of the one item I need to grab- but I have a really dark disdain of kids who behave like savages in public.  Whenever I see little miscreants flailing down the frozen food section wailing because Mom won’t buy the ice-cream treats, or I am treated to a whining diatribe  such as, “I WANNA CANDYYYYYYY!!!!” in the checkout lane,  I seriously question the prevailing attitude that it is bad to beat a miscreant child half-way across K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Kroger, etc.  to enforce behavioral norms.   Sometimes the only way to get through to their minds is to warm up their behinds from time to time.

I don’t condone child abuse, but there are times when the little ones need a little corporal punishment.  This kid needed a trip to the ladies’ and a thorough hiney swatting.  I am sure most of the people in the store would secretly agree with me, except maybe a few whiny bleeding hearts who don’t have kids but do have Children’s Services on speed-dial in case some poor child is at risk of having his little self-esteem tarnished.

I grew up with a good Catholic mother.  She beat us whether we needed it or not, especially in church.   There was no nursery in church.  You did the Catholic calesthenics along with everyone else under fear of a good pounding.  

Of course back in the 70’s maintaining strict discipline was considered normal.  If your kids were even the least bit out of line you were expected to backhand them before someone else did it for you.   Kids had the fear in them,  and rightfully so most of the time,  in my humble opinion.  I can see the potential for abuse here, but people didn’t have to put up with screaming banchees rolling on the floor in Wal-Mart or be treated to a toddler sitting in its mother’s cart throwing handfuls of dog food down the aisles.  I won’t say the regular beatings made me turn out better or even “normal” but at least I do know how to act in public.  

To change the subject- which I do all the time- this is what happened to the illustrious Hello Kitty Yaris:

This sucks.  Not to mention it’s an endeavor just to get a week’s worth of groceries in the VW.  As far as the VW, I like the traction control and the butt warmers in the seats.  If it had a 5-speed it would be a fun car.

I am one of the 13%- 13% of American drivers prefer manual transmissions.  I miss my car mostly because it is a 5 speed, and I have more than ample room in the trunk for groceries and other assorted BS.  However I am grateful I got the VW- when I went to pick up my rental all the other cars were Kias and that would be hard to take when one is used to driving a Toyota all the time. 

Speaking of Toyota the whole accelerator issue is way overblown in my opinion.  It used to be fairly common on a number of cars that the throttle cable would stick or break- leaving the throttle wide open.  Shut it off (one click only so as not to lock the steering) and coast over to the side of the road.  It’s not rocket science.  I had to do it three or four times when the throttle cable on my 72 Super Beetle broke. 

Then again the average person knows absolutely nothing about cars other than they like to drive them, so go figure.  As far as I am concerned Toyota still builds the best cars out there, so I have no problem.  Yaris wasn’t one of the affected models anyway but I wouldn’t be too freaked if it was.  Shut it off and coast- in the rare event the accelerator malfunctions.  I would be more worried about blowing out a tire and spinning out- a much more likely failure, yet no one is screaming about the tire companies, eh?