* Something funny, child-related: Young "Timmy Johnson," author of a screed against adults who have -- wrongly, he says -- labeled him "A handful."
A label like "handful"—nothing more than a social construct—can take years to shake off. It could
very well haunt me until I'm 6, even 7 years old. And by that time, it probably will have led to something even worse. Today it may be "handful," but how long before you are being called a wisenheimer, or even worse, a Buster Brown?
Like Yossarian in short pants, Timmy realizes the complex futility of his reality, but fights on:
Not unlike the proverbial infant strapped into a bouncy-bouncy chair, I am at the mercy of the adult world's judgment, a world in which any protest on my part is met with the suggestion that maybe somebody needs a nap. As if a few minutes of lie-down sleepy-time could even begin to solve a problem this systemic and pervasive! [The Onion]
* Something very much not funny, child-related, is thew news that 18-year-old Charles Myers, charged with the road-rage execution of 14-year-old Tykeem Law, was on the wrong side of a beatdown in a holding cell while awaiting a court date yesterday. While I don't feel sorry for Myers, it doesn't exactly feel good to take pleasure in the news that anyone, even this crackhead South Philly crumb, got some OZ-style justice. [Inky, DN]
