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Vacation Day, Part Deux: Act 1, Scene 1 - road side lobster shack, diners seated outside on wooden picnic tables with colored umbrellas and clear plastic squeeze bottles of ketchup. Delicious smells waft from the stainless steel kitchen, all sorts of seafood delicacies are soon to be delivered to the hungry patrons on bright colored plastic trays.

I'm watching and waiting for our food, starved more from the tantalizing scents than from the fact that it's dinner time and I haven't really had lunch. Kids are cavorting in the reedy grass to one side of the parkinglot/picnic table area. One towheaded little boy stand beside the remnants of a dock post, holding an empty paper cup. He tries to balance the cup on the post, and little Newton is hardly surprised when it falls off and rolls away. The white paper is a blot on the rich green. I rather expect that he'll go pick it up, instead he waits patiently until his mom sees him and then he points to the cup.

"Pick it up dear, you don't want to litter."

Good, that's what I expected, but the kid doesn't. He deliberately saunters away with glances as his parent.

Let's pause here. Had Brat been mine I would have upped the ante with a glare and reminder that orders are to be carried out. If he didn't I would have hauled his ass over to the cup and made him pick it up. Resistance would have been met with a swift whack. I do not tolerate in-your-face disobedience. If the kid was distracted, OK that's one thing. I'd pick up the cup and then remind him later that it's important to respect nature and other people's property. Return to scene...

Mom, likely some rich-twat, does neither. She glances over, sees the cup, but can't be bothered. She gathers up her bag, the other kids, and calls to her brat to follow. I want to smack her. Clearly she's not going to clean up after her child, she's much too important to dirty her expensive shoes on the grass.

I hate with a passion people like this. Last time it happened in front of me I picked up the trash and handed it back to them with a friendly "here you forgot this." The person has a conniption of course, because I had caught them AND called them out. "THERE WASN'T ANY GARBAGE CAN!" The woman had screamed at me.

But about then my dinner came, and a valid distraction prevailed. I hope Brat acts the same at home, but I suspect that Mom probably doesn't deal with it then either. I'd wager that it falls to some poor cleaning lady to resolve. Yah, Brat is going to be a great adult, the type that stubs his butts out on the beach sand and leaves them there for everyone else to see. Ugh.