First clue is that the author, Ronnie Cohen, is a freelance journalist from San Francisco. The second one is what is glaringly absent from this whole hot mess.
I can do nothing right in my teenage son’s eyes. He grills me about the distance traveled of each piece of fruit and every vegetable I purchase. He interrogates me about the provenance of all the meat, poultry, and fish I serve. He questions my every move—from how I choose a car (why not electric?) and a couch (why synthetic fill?) to how I tend the garden (why waste water on flowers?)—an unremitting interrogation of my impact on our desecrated environment. While other parents hide alcohol and pharmaceuticals from their teens, I hide plastic containers and paper towels.
I feel like I’ve become the adolescent, sneaking around to avoid my offspring’s scrutiny and lectures. Only when Cory leaves the house do I dare clean the refrigerator of foul-smelling evidence of my careless waste—wilted greens, rotten avocados, moldy leftovers. When he goes out to dinner, I smuggle in a piece of halibut or sturgeon, fish the stocks of which, he tells me, are dangerously depleted. Even worse, I sometimes prepare beef—a drain on precious water, my son assures me, and a heavy contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. […]
I began to sow the seeds when I decided to buy organic food. I figured it was healthier, and I wanted to do my tiny part to stop contaminating our soil and groundwater with toxic chemicals. I explained this to Cory as he sat in his high chair while I fed him Earth’s Best organic pears from a 2.5-ounce jar. We were listening to Raffi sing “Evergreen, Everblue” as he implored us to “help this planet Earth.” “At this point in time,” he sang, “it’s up to me, it’s up to you.”
Raffi’s pleas blended with similar entreaties in Dr. Seuss’ the Lorax. The shortish, brownish, oldish, and mossy Lorax spoke for the trees, the Truffula trees on the brink of extinction, exhorting my son to take action. “UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better,” I read to Cory. “It’s not.”
We discussed the book’s lessons on our strolls down the Whole Foods aisles. […]
The first hint that my indoctrination was working came when Cory was 12. We were in Costa Rica, about to hike through the rainforest, and he refused to apply bug repellent. Despite my dozen monologues about mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases, he declined the oily liquid. As payback for my antipathy toward all things chemical, my boy spiked a 103-degree temperature and briefly appeared on the brink of death from dengue fever.
I wasn’t the only one talking to Cory about our ailing planet. His paternal grandmother was so worried about climate change that one summer when the family gathered in Cape Cod, she gave us each a single beige cloth napkin and said it would have to suffice for the entire week.
I am reminded of the napkin incident when my son wipes his oily, pizza-stained hands on his jeans or an upholstered dining room chair, or when he leaves a sticky trail of locally grown organic orange drippings from the kitchen to the dining room because he wants to save a napkin.
I have stopped buying oranges.
If you can make it through the whole exercise in Ha ha, my kid is off to college and I’m not sorry, isn’t that funny? narcissism, you’ll find the only males mentioned are the 100 lb bully Cory and his best friend.
Where is dad? Or grandpa?
Where was the required influence of an adult man who would have pulled this little asswipe aside and told him to knock-off the totalitarian nonsense or get knocked into next week — “Don’t ever, ever let me catch you treating your mom this way again.”
Maybe if Ronnie had been taking Cory to temple regularly rather than Whole Foods she would have realized the real meaning behind her convenient sprinkling of Jewish sayings while he was growing up.
Maybe Ronnie would have found her own courage to stop the bullying she is responsible for …
I knew Cory had met his match when the BFF came for dinner (vegetarian, naturally), emerged from the bathroom with his hands dripping, and declined a towel. Neither paper nor cloth would be necessary, he insisted, while I watched the water from his hands trickle onto my hardwood floor. Like an untrained puppy, he appeared blind to the puddles he left in his wake as I followed behind him mopping at his heels.
No no no.
I would have stood in front of the little asshole and told him as he was a guest in MY HOUSE, he would either behave as one or get out — AND handed him the paper towels to clean up after himself.
However, I’m an adult woman, not some Baby-boomer female wimp who writes on the environment and “social justice” and is entirely incapable of raising a civil human being.
A female wimp who is ponying up $47,000 a year in tuition so the eco-fascist prick can attend Brown University.
h/t dicentra
I got you linked up, Darleen. Thanks!
See, ‘Besieged Leftist San Francisco Mom Raises Insufferable Eco-Monster Teenager; Lives to Regret It’.
Thanks, Donald!!
So, ‘foots is from old Frisco.
Who knew?
she seems like a nice person and a good mom and what she’s talking about is a for real thing that’s happening to kids and it’s not her fault her kid twisted off a little
he’s just a kid and he’s not doing any real harm just being a lil obsessy
i wish i had some waffles
you know what I can make that happen
brb
Lord stop me from grabbing a 2×4 [grown in a sustainable forest, of course] and heading off to San Fran and whacking this lunatic Mother upside the head.
This is what happens when you don’t understand the parent/ child relationship.
ONE of the things I should say…
Used to be, there were no bad kids, only bad parents who produced bad kids.
Now I guess bad kids just happen by accident, with no one responsible. When no one has to be the grown-up, and those who refuse to be the grown-up are propped up by strangers with no rightful stake in their lives, society runs dry of grown-ups awfully quick.
Civilizations are neither built nor sustained by spoiled brats.
N.B. this kid’s behavior is aided and abetted by the public school system. Kid’s are instructed to confront their parents about these things and to “speak truth to power'” or engage in “civil disobedience.” Know, that if your children are in public schools, they are being interrogated about your habits. They are subtly and not so subtly being conditioned to be your enemy. I know whereof I speak as I’ve seen “secret” lesson plans sent around by various Leftist organizations to willing school administrators.
The mother in this story is a sap without question. But you don’t have to be a Progressive fool to have a kid like this. The state, in the form of the public schools, will raise one for you.
Back in 1990, my Brother’s two girls came to me one day to ‘insist’ that I quite smoking, that it was bad for me and that I was slowly killing them and the rest of my Family.
They were instructed to do this to all the smokers in their Family by teachers at a Catholic High School.
The propagandizing is everywhere: public schools, religious schools, charter schools.
The only safe havens are Home Schools.
The only safe haven is home. She needs to pack the l’il bastard’s bags and only invite him back when he has a life of his own and finds an alternative to toilet paper.
“They were instructed to do this to all the smokers in their Family by teachers at a Catholic High School. ”
First they came for the smokers
Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a smoker
Socialists.Then they came for the christians
Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a christian
Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
“You tell your teacher if she wants to nag me about shit like that, she’ll have to come do it herself.”
Ya reap what ya sow.
Just imagine what it will be like after another year or two of the president she voted for.
i think it’s nice of this lady to tell her story
someday her kid will read it after she’s dead and he’ll be like man I’m a dickwad
but the real takeaway from this article is how it pleads with the reader to take The Cory Challenge today and every day
what can YOU do today to offset Cory’s ludicrous neurotic napkin-saving and restore balance to the system?
Barbeque a pikachu.
ok that’s one suggestion
No can do, guins. You ever try to clean one?
[…] Protein Wisdom: First clue is that the author, Ronnie Cohen, is a freelance journalist from San Francisco. The second one is what is glaringly absent from this whole hot mess. […]
Greetings:
Obviously dearest mommy’s history textbooks didn’t have any chapters about Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot’s fundamental transformation of Cambodia. Turning children loose on the parents seemed to be a requisite part of their programs.
Fricassee an Eli?
**** Hitler spread ecological panic by claiming that only land would bring Germany security and by denying the science that promised alternatives to war.
By polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the United States has done more than any other nation to bring about the next ecological panic, yet it is the only country where climate science is still resisted by certain political and business elites.
These deniers tend to present the empirical findings of scientists as a conspiracy and question the validity of science — an intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler’s.
The full consequences of climate change may reach America only decades after warming wreaks havoc in other regions.
And by then it will be too late for climate science and energy technology to make any difference.
Indeed, by the time the door is open to the demagogy of ecological panic in the United States, Americans will have spent years spreading climate disaster around the world.
“[Timothy Snyder], professor of history at Yale University and the author of ‘Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.'” ****
“…uncomfortably close…”
Cease and desist, climate disaster spreaders!
In fact. it smacks, it does.
Our neighborhood is full of mini versions of this little sanctimonious prick. When one of them is at my house and they ask me where the recycling bin is I tell them, “We don’t recycle because we care about poverty and sorting garbage is a useless waste of our family’s valuable time.” If they delve any further – which I encourage by being polite and leaving the conversation a bit open-ended, I will explain that the time of people in western cultures is FAR better spent inventing things that makes the entire world (but specifically the Third World) a better/safer place to live than it is spent sorting garbage. Things like vaccines, electricity, computers, airplanes, dams, highways, sanitation, etc. And then I ask: wouldn’t you rather be inventing something useful than sorting your family’s garbage? How does being a part-time garbageman help a sick child in Africa?
And they leave stumped, chastened and questioning the authority that has lied to them for years. Which is EXACTLY what we should want.
The thing that people on the “conservative” side of the world seem to miss is just because we have the better facts and the more appealing message does not mean we can neglect that we still have to attract people to our position by expounding it confidently, purposefully and tactfully.
I have a friend who was always a conservative but, now sounds like a liberal. I am guessing he wants to be the cool dad and goes along with the propaganda his kids pick up in school.
I tell friends I have one rule when it come to the environment: don’t waste stuff. I think that covers everything.
Modern conveniences used for health, safety, and time management are not wasteful. Big gap between convenient and sloth.
Well put, Genghis.
Cows and greenhouse gas is so amusing. Termites of the world produce more methane than cows could ever dream of producing.
“man I’m a dickwad”
Not sure if you are aware, but without the “quotation marks” that becomes an expositional statement of fact. Yes, yes you are.
The thing that people on the “conservative” side of the world seem to miss is just because we have the better facts and the more appealing message
Unfortunately, no we really don’t. Not as much as we’d like to think:
us: Come getcher recipe for Cold Stone Creamery ice cream that you can make yourself!
them: Free Ice Cream Forevar!
us: It takes great humility, lots of research, and thoughtfulness to learn the lessons of history and to carry on the time-tested values that our forbears handed on to us.
them: As the Latest generation, we’re also the smartest, wisest, and most moral. Don’t even bother with the past: they were racist, sexist, homophobic, and 6 flavors of evil.
us: Don’t tear down a wall unless you know why it is there. You’ll have to put some thought and research in to this.
them: CULTURAL VANDALISM FEELS SO GOOD!
us: Self discipline, standards, adherence to truth where we can find it.
them: If it feels good, do it.
us: Grow the hell up.
them: Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.
Any time you open up the path of least resistance, whether it relates to sexual behavior, economics, or maturity, most people will take that path until it no longer pays to do so.
Or until reality smacks ’em upside the head with a 2×4, but only if they live long enough and have the sense to take the lesson when it comes.
As P.J. O’Rourke noted, environmentalism is a luxury good. We can engage in it because we can afford to do so. Ms. Cohen and her son do not realize that simple fact. One can preach to the bushmen of the Kalahari all day about their carbon footprint and they will still burn stuff to cook their wildebeest. Why? Because they don’t have coal fired electrical plants feeding kitchen ranges. Why do “organic” vegetables cost more? Because without pesticides and herbicides, one loses 50 % of one’s crop. Smaller supply equals higher price. Which is better? Throwing away food packaging or throwing away spoiled food?
Sanctimony can be quite satisfying when someone else is footing the ultimate bill.
I can’t understand how paying more for the same results is in any way “green”. If it cost more, it is less efficient, and therefore takes more resources to produce.
I think organic crops would do even worse if regular farms were not already killing all the harmful insects.
“Sanctimony can be quite satisfying when someone else is footing the ultimate bill.”
First World Problems.
Remember that kid who went up to Alaska and starved to death in a bus out in the wilderness? Winter Is Coming.
Of course these new eating disorders and the equivalent variant of Karen Carpenter starving herself to death.
are the equivalent…
how chris mccandless died
Ask the kid a lot of questions until he realizes he is a gullible fool with no expertise in anything, chanting a message almost thoughtlessly. When he tries to play victim or call his interrogator a bigot explain to him that that is a lie which makes him a liar. Explain that the word of liar doesn’t mean anything. Trust is built on being informed, honest and accurate not on one’s level of induced panic and zeal. Make him understand that you would speak to his teachers the same way and they would respond much the same way he did. Lead him out of his path of being a tool into being an informed decision maker who can research things and thus learn to detect and bullshit even if someone made it seem popular and this true.
he knows a lot more about pee-ponics than i do that’s for sure
“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
c. coolidge 7/5/1926
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-on-the-occasion-of-the-one-hundred-and-fiftieth-anniversary-of-the-declaration-of-independence/
[…] So que in Darleen Click’s post about a San Francisco mom and her uberannoying teenage son: […]
>”Disorder”
I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand,
Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?
These sensations barely interest me for another day,
I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away.
It’s getting faster, moving faster now, it’s getting out of hand,
On the tenth floor, down the back stairs, it’s a no man’s land,
Lights are flashing, cars are crashing, getting frequent now,
I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, let it out somehow.
What means to you, what means to me, and we will meet again,
I’m watching you, I’m watching her, I’ll take no pity from your friends,
Who is right, who can tell, and who gives a damn right now,
Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know,
Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know,
Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know,
I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling,
I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling.
Feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling.
<
joy division
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lIQhXik–w
Any man that likes Joy Division can’t be all bad.
Nature really has it out for us.
Once Hubris is legion, Nemesis always follows in her path.
Where is dad? Or grandpa?
No bicycles in this aquarium.
[…] relieved that she’s shipping him off to Brown University. Yeh, that’ll help him a lot. https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57645 Mother raises insufferable prick, is […]