Cynical human in a cynical age

[chicken]

There are these kids across the street selling lemonade. They keep yelling "Lemonade!" in the loudest possible voices, and it is REALLY starting to grate on our nerves.

Part of the problem is that we live on an extremely busy street, on which people drive very quickly up a steep hill, so it is extremely unlikely that anyone would even stop to buy some.

Furthermore, the most cynical part for me is that I keep thinking, I don't know these kids, they could have put anything into the lemonade, poison, pee, spit, vinegar, alcohol, who knows? I hate to be so cynical, but this is an age in which little kids hurt each other with guns on purpose or accidentally, an age in which kids get poisoned, razor-bladed apples on Halloween. My worst fear of Lord of the Flies style kids come to the fore. I know there's a 99.9% chance these kids are not like that, but since I can make my own lemonade, and since their voices are so darn grating, I just get really peeved.

Comments

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

razor-bladed apples on Halloween

Just to play devil's advocate, there's never been a razor-blade found in an apple on Halloween. There's also never been a child poisoned with Halloween candy, except by their own parents. Good ole American urban legends.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Their own parents, how awful. Why would a parent poison his own child? Sick.

Guess I shouldn't be quite so paranoid just based on urban legends.

Still, the yelling drove me darn crazy.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

I know all about the yelling. Chris and I have 2 neighbor kids who always play in our yard. Well, they play in everyone's yard, but they are always yelling.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Maybe after all we all yelled as kids.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Right, viciouswishes just said something similar. I should have chosen better examples to justify my somewhat unjustifiable paranoia and ire. Doesn't change the fact those kids shouldn't have been yelling so loudly and endangering their lives on such a busy street.

The good thing is that after over an hour of yelling, their mother came out of their house and spoke to them. I don't know what she said, but after that they stopped yelling and just held up their signs. Much better.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Yep, got it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, though in an earlier version of this post I said that these stories were all legends, according to snopes there are several actual cases of strangers putting objects such as needles in Halloween treats (but not of stranger-poisonings, apart from one ambiguous case).