My thoughts today, for an unexplained reason are on staying out of the way and letting life happen. Last week I watched a mom who seemed very much to be...ummm..not very smart. I watched her with her two children and judged her for her parenting style, which consisted of yelling, humiliating, and insulting the children. The thoughts going through my mind were along the lines of "stupid people shouldn't breed". Then today I saw a node entitled something similar and I started thinking. (uh oh)

If I was queen..if I ruled the world and could really make and enforce such wide spread rules...what would be the effect? Would I allow that mother to have more children? How would I decide who was "stupid" and who met my breeding standards? I thought back to some of my worst days parenting. I thought back to how I must have looked the day I had a terrible head cold and couldn't think well and my daughter threw a temper tantrum in the grocery store. I lost it that day. I yanked my daughter up off the floor and drug her screaming out the door. I'm sure my face was contorted and I was babbling inane insults at her. If the breeding god had seen me that day, I might have been rendered sterile. I think of all the times that I've yelled at my kids, or at someone else. Does that make me bad, and unfit to reproduce? I don't think so.

I started thinking too about what shapes us as humans, what experiences make us who we are and give us our strengths. Some of my best qualities were forged from dealings with difficult people and unpleasant situations. If I were queen and did my best to eliminate unpleasantness, what qualities would fail to develop in my subjects? I'd make a sucky queen I guess. I think maybe I think too much.