The Facebook Status of the Week - Devil's Spawn in the Local Barnes and Noble.

I tend to be one of those Facebook users with a bad case of diarrhea of the status update. I don't keep my FB compadres updated on things like bathroom activities or which dressing I am going to put on my salad, but I do tend to drop all sorts of tidbits from this bandbox of a brain of mine into that little update box. I am often asked, with a quizzical tilt of the head, where a particularly strange status update came from (which I take as a polite way of asking 'what the hell is wrong with you?'). As I thought about this it occurred to me that it might be fun to blog once a week about my most interesting or downright strange status update and expand upon its interestingness (great word choice, teach) or strangeness in the expanded format that this blog offers. This could be a lot of fun. Or it might just convince my five readers that the time to call the local sanitarium, whose number they have had ready and waiting on speed dial for me, has at last arrived. Either way, I don't think it will be boring. So without any further meandering, I present the inaugural FB status of the week...

Brian detests "parents" who come to Barnes and Noble and drop their demon spawn in the children's section to revel in unsupervised destruction...I came within an inch of handing the little Lucifers an umbrella and encouraging them to run out into the raging thunderstorm to play "touch the clouds".

OK, OK.

I know it's a bit harsh.

Any desire to encourage children to engage in behavior that could potentially lead to toe nail frying electrocution is one that most likely should not be shared publicly.

But you should have seen these kids.

It was a stormy Friday night. The Wife had flown out that morning to Tulsa, which left The Peanut and I to our own devices. A late spring thunderstorm was approaching, obliterating our plans to spend some time at the park. We decided to go to the bookstore to hang out for a bit while the worst of the storm had its way with the area. As is our ritual, The Peanut allowed me a few minutes to browse the new arrivals before grabbing my hand and patiently guiding me toward the children's section. It was around 8:00 in the evening, so at first glance, the area appeared to be deserted. The Peanut made a bee line for the Judy B. Jones section and I settled into one of the small green chairs to wait for her to bring me a book to read aloud. That's when, from the small alcove toward the back, where the Thomas the Tank Engine toy tracks were set up, I heard them.

Two boys, both seemingly ten or so years old. Parents as absent as Sean Penn at a Tea Party rally. From the harsh volume of their play, I was able to deduce that they were engaged in a game of 'crash the engines into each other as hard as we can and giggle at the imagined carnage thereby unleashed'. The choice of game did not particularly bother me. I was a young boy once, and there is no game more fun than one that involves the imagined death and destruction of multitudes of faceless imaginary people. What plucked my parental nerve was the sheer volume of their play. An imaginary explosion took on the power of an actual one from the vocal cords of these two youngsters. A harried Barnes and Noble employee would pass by every couple of minutes and implore the boys to quiet down, a request that went largely ignored. The Peanut came over to me, book in hand, and solemnly confided, "Daddy...those boys are making bad choices. Where are their parents?"  I informed her that I did not know and attempted to read aloud the adventures of Judy B.

As I read, the train area suddenly got quiet. Instantly the circuitry in both my parent brain and my teacher brain began to glow white hot. Noise is bad. Sudden silence is worse. The Peanut even looked up, sensing the unnatural change. And that was when we heard it.

R-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-P-P-P-P...

Then giggles. Loud whispers. Then that sound again.

R-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-P-P-P-P...

The Peanut looked up at me, a nervous look in her eyes. "What are they doing daddy?"

"I don't know kiddo," I told her. "But I'm gonna go find out."

I told her to stay in our seat and quietly approached the alcove that contained the train set. A good parent or teacher develops a ninja like stealth when tom foolery is afoot and I applied my skills here. As I approached, I saw one of the two little imps reach onto a shelf and take down an unopened box. The box contained a boxcar that one could connect magnetically to the other cars in the Thomas locomotive. The box was most definitely sealed shut, the product inside most definitely for sale. Imp #1 looked around and began to open the box when his eyes met mine. He froze in place, index finger halfway in the toy car's box. My gaze slid over to imp#2, sitting on the floor, two recently opened boxes by his feet, a freshly opened boxcar in each grubby hand. Their frozen tableau of "caught red handed" would have been funny if I wasn't so peeved.

The mother began to mutter excuses and denials. I have heard it all before, a parent who won't allow their children to learn the important life lesson of taking responsibility when they make a bad choice. I pointedly told her none of this would have happened if her child had been supervised then I walked away, leaving the imps to their fate...or apparent lack thereof.

I sat back in the chair, watched The Peanut run off to find a different book ("I'm not in the mood for Judy B daddy. I'm feeling like Dr. Seuss."), pulled out my amazingly awesome Palm Pre Plus, and composed the status update.

What would you have done?