Chapped Choo Choo

Just read an interesting article in the Post about a 17-year-old kid trying to contract someone to kill his parents. Unfortunately for him, the person with whom he negotiated this act was an undercover officer as a part of a sting operation. This seemed completely unthinkable: some kid plotting to have his parents blown away.

Then, reading further, I see that the child was upset by the disciplinary measures his parents instituted for having made bad grades in school. They would ground him for long periods of time and, as punishment, remove from his room, one by one, his possessions. At one point, they said, there was nothing in the room except for a bed and a chest of drawers. Then, hidden deep in the article, near the end, was a little snippet of interesting info: the boy was angry that the parents, a year ago, when he was 16, kicked him out of the house.

Uh… It is true, they do not say why they kicked him out. But, isn't it illegal to kick your kid out of the house when he is only 16? I thought that parents had the legal responsibility to care for their children until they are 18…

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think that anything warrants a child finding a hit man in some motel somewhere so that he could promise his own father's truck as payment to knock his parents off. No, that would be insane. But, I will say that there sure are a lot of senseless, cruel parents out there who take advantage of the helplessness of childhood in order to mentally ravage their own young. I call into evidence the book "It", for instance. Now, it would be kind of nice, in my opinion, for those poor, abused kids, those that are not strong enough either mentally or physically to defend themselves, to get at least some kind of revenge against their parents. I am not that far removed from my own childhood to remember the injustice of it all, and wishing that my father would occasionally get a whack back for the many heavy-handed beatings he gave my sisters in front of me. That was not cool. But, parents, unlike their kids, do not seem to have anyone to hold them accountable sometimes, and they get to just do what they want.

I am just saying, what kind of fucking bitch would you have to be to have your kid actually try to hire someone to kill you? I mean, really.

On a different note, to try to satisfy an interested reader, I would like to comment on a part of German politics/current events that is on everyone's mind at the moment here: the strike of the train system. Now, unless you are living somewhere on the east coast in the US, and are reliant on the trains to get from one place to the next, I would imagine that you would not find it bothersome if the engineers from Amtrak decided to simply not drive their trains because of some complicated contract negotiation. I mean, who cares, right?

For years, the German government has done just about everything humanly possible to encourage people to, more and more, give up their cars, and use public transportation. Hell, Chris and I did it and we never looked back. There are very, very few places in the country, or the entire European continent, for that matter, that cannot be reached by train, tram, bus, metro, etc. So, cars are really luxury items and are taxed as such.

(A wonderful side effect of the non-necessity of cars in the country means that there are many fewer bad drivers on the streets and Autobahns. When someone is caught driving badly here, or in any way intoxicated, the police simply take away that person's license either temporarily or permanently. They can do this with ease, because drivers have a much harder time proving they must drive in order to get to work. "Take the train, you stupid drunk.")

Well, the engineers here want a contract of their own, exclusive from their other Deutsche Bahn counterparts. They feel that their job is much more stressful than the pencil pushers and, therefore, deserve more money and other benefits. In order to better negotiate, they have been, over the past several weeks, randomly choosing days to not drive regional trains. Regional trains are those between a major city and its suburbs or trains connecting cities of the same region. The national trains, connecting the overall country have remained in operation. Until yesterday. Yesterday, the courts decided that the engineers also have the right to strike on the national trains, bringing the national transportation system to a grinding halt.

Now, I am all for unions, and I especially appreciate the many rights that, over the years, they have brought our overall societies: you know, things like a 40-hour work week, the abolishment of child labor, the weekend (that's a nice one.) But, I do not believe that it is right for the German government to allow one group of several thousand people to completely sabotage the national meanns of transportation just so that they can get better benefits. This is simply not fair. Transportation cannot be hindered if a country expects to thrive economically. The German people are losing patience and understanding for the engineer's union, and now that the ports in Hamburg, etc. have started to fill up with goods waiting to be delivered, just about every sector of society is going to be completely fed up with these selfish few. Hospitals can't strike and close their emergency room doors, neither can fireman just put down their hoses in protest. Maybe pilots should just decide they need a raise in mid flight. Or maybe Homer Simpson should refuse to press that "cool the core" button at the power plant, causing a meltdown for Springfield. When I was singing at the theatre, the state would not allow us to strike as that would force whole productions to simply not take place. But, the engineers get to completely cripple the economy? I don't get it. Hey, I'm all for the free economy and its "natural corrections", but don't friggin get my ass to Hamburg on your train and then let me try to hitch my way back home. I am not living in Kazakhstan, for Christ's sake!