Raising Us

Our evolution, herein contained

Stupid town, stupid laws

Posted on July 4, 2009 - Filed Under Whine with my cheese, And your point is?, Adult swim, Parenting, Uncategorized

As you may have noticed from some of the pictures posted in the last couple of days, Maggie and I went to the Daniel Dopps 4th Annual Memorial Rodeo here in Mountain Home last Saturday night. It was a good time overall, though there was something that got to me.

It happened almost as soon as we walked through the gates. We needed to get our food and drinks before we found a place to sit down, so we started looking around for who was selling what and where. One of the things I was looking for in particular was the beer tent. As we walked up to what they called the ‘beer garden’ I noticed there were a couple of guys standing at the entrance. Reasoning they wanted to see my identification, I started to reach for it. One of the guys cut me off to tell me that Maggie would not be able to come inside the gated area because she was less than 21 years of age. I was so taken aback by this that I just sort of stood there and looked at him for a minute. Then I did something uncharacteristic: I told him that the rule was stupid. He just smiled and said “Good evening” to the next person in line. I don’t generally like to tell the pee-on who is enforcing the rule that the rule is stupid; he didn’t make it up and might not even agree with it himself. However, I was so incensed by it that I couldn’t help myself.

Now I am sure some of you are thinking the rule was a good one. Well, that’s fine; you are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, I would strongly object and here’s why. Maggie’s little soul is not going to shrivel up and die if she happens to see her Daddy and some other people consuming alcoholic beverages. How do I know this is true? Well, we drink at home and we have taken her to restaurants that serve alcohol and her soul is still very much intact. But it would seem that the people who run this little shitpile of a town think they should impose their brand of morality on me, effectively telling me how I should raise my own child. The other thing that really gets me about this is that I am certain—based on my observation of human nature—that those same ‘highly moralistic’ community leaders do some pretty immoral things. I would bet my paycheck one of them screws his secretary on the side and cheats customers of the business he owns. Oh, and there was one other reason, a more practical thing. At one point in the evening, I saw a boy (probably 8 or 10 years old) hanging out with his parents at the beer garden: he was on the outside and they were inside. Now, you have to understand: the garden was set up using farming gates. So, here’s this kid doing what a boy his age would do—climbing the gate and talking to his parents. And yet, that was permitted and no one was saying anything to them. But if one thinks about the intent of the rule/law, one would have to conclude that family has had to spend every last minute since the rodeo in some convent somewhere having all manner of evil spirits cast out from the boy.

I know some of you will probably empathize, while others will wonder why I am whining about this. Well, it’s just something that got my goat and I felt like telling the story. There you go.

Comments

2 Responses to “Stupid town, stupid laws”

  1. Jill on July 7th, 2009 1:36 pm

    pictures are so sweet

  2. suzanne mkay on July 7th, 2009 3:01 pm

    I agree, we saw them i.d. an 80 year old man good grief. Guess they didn`t care about the 8 year old outside waiting.

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