BAD KIDS

I spent the day at my cousin's house yesterday. He and his wife have four children: two daughters, aged 6 and 4-years-old and twin boys, who will hit the terrible twos next month. As migrainie-inducing as their task sounds, my cousins have been blessed with the loveliest, most sweetest little children in the world. They rarely bother their parents--the boys' most serious transgression is somehow pulling apart the cupboard child safety locks, lugging out pots and pans, while chanting "patheela" (which I've just discovered is Urdu for "cooking pot").

So, there I am. The kids are angelic and I'm having a great time coloring with them (I satisfy all of my pent-up coloring cravings at my cousin's place...I'm attaching a pic of my extaordinary effort of staying within the lines (all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten, after all)).

Enter guests to our little party. Guests have two children: a 6-year-old daughter and a not-yet-5-year old son, who we'll call Satan-spawn. Holy crap, that kid was BAD. And, holy shit, his parents DID NOT discipline him at all. He relished in not only beating up the twins, but then detailing to his mother exactly how he'd hit each of them. He yanked their toys out of their hands and attempted to pull cakes and open bottles of soft drinks off the dining table. During one of these attempts, I held up a stern finger to him and said, "NO. Don't you dare stick your finger in the cake! That's gross," and he started hurling obscenities at me at the top of his lungs ("STUPID, DON'T DARE TALK TO ME!!!! YOU STUPID STUUUUUPID!" hurled out of the mouth of a not-yet-5-year-old sounds like the worst of swear words.

Satan spawn proceeded to kick and punch me.

Yes, I was kicked and then punched in the general thigh region by a not-yet-5-year-old.

Oh, I was pissed off. Squatting down to eye level I asked Satan spawn through gritted teeth if he kicked and punched his mother, told him that he was a bad, bad boy and that he should be ashamed of himself. He just folded his arms across his chest, mustered up a sinister I'm-a-future-delinquent-and-bully-and-will-possibly-be-arrested-for-battery look and skulked away.

It took all of my willpower to restrain myself from giving the mother a lecture on the difference between naughty kids and downright disturbing behavior in kids.

Ugh.