By now you likely have encountered this thing, currently wending its way across the internet. In short, the story goes that the guy—a redditor (of course) known as thr111—spited the whiny, out-of-control child and distracted, defensive mother behind him in line at Burger King by purchasing every pie left in the place, since he knew (from the kid's squeals) that that's what the kid wanted for himself. The story ends with the guy staring down the mother and taking a big triumphant chomp of one of his 23 pies, just as she discovers what he's done.
As you might guess, much of the response to this redditor's tale congratulates the guy—"a Gawker hero," he's called by a writer at a certain Beyoncé Knowles fanzine—for sticking it to the shitty, entitled kid and his hostile, overindulgent mother. Never mind that the story reads as—and pretty obviously is—a work of lazy revenge-fantasy fiction ("I stand there and pull out a pie and slowly start eating eat as I stare back at her. She starts running towards me but can't get to me because of other lineups in the food court"—oh, for sure, man) by a fedora-clad dimwit who certainly never did any such thing; the more important point, here, is this:
Even if this story is true—especially if it is true (and it isn't, not for a second)—thr111 is an asshole. And treating him like a hero makes you one, too.
Listen. Kids can be annoying. You do not get any bonus points for disliking them. You used to be one of them; you have only survived to your current state of shitty, entitled quasi-adulthood and whiny, wholly unearned misanthropy because the people who were adults back during your physiological childhood (as a thing distinct from the prolonged emotional and intellectual childhood that characterizes the Ew gross, kids! crowd) tolerated your tantrums and squeals and bullshit. Because enough of them behaved like adults to offset the fedoras and overgrown teenagers and Starbucks philosophers who were dumb enough to treat childhood like it's a personality defect and not simply the first part of growing into an adult.
You did not become an (objectively lousy excuse for an) adult now by having the good taste and wise judgment to leave childhood, O Hater of the Young. You are not smarter than kids because you became an adult and they didn't. You survived a certain number of years, your hormones did some shit, and you grew hair on your genitals. Congratulations on that having occurred for you before today's little kids. It is your responsibility to ensure that this does not turn out to have been a bad thing. You can start by not holding childhood against children.
Don't spite kids. They do not get to choose whether they will behave like children; they are children. You, at least in theory, get to choose. Buy the kid a friggin' pie, tousle his hair, and give his mom a smile. Save your bile for the next 13-year-old girl who dares to sign into Xbox Live, you absolute fucking choad.
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