"Well that was stupid, guess they shouldn't just do it."

March 26, 2005 6:43 AM

A Child's View of the Army"....Like every other boy he was going through the little green army men phase....Gabe is roughly five years old and very articulate. Thus it should have come as little surprise when he began having one army man in charge, and the rest start building something. "Sir, we're ready to build the rocket." " : Five year old Gabe explains - via stacked creamers and table bricabrac, at an IHOP breakfast - the ramifications of mindless subservience to authority.
posted by troutfishing (26 comments total)

Interesting, but apropo of ...what?
posted by Pressed Rat at 6:53 AM on March 26, 2005

The things we put in our children's mind.
posted by wheelieman at 7:01 AM on March 26, 2005

I applaud the creation of the 'precocious' tag. Now if I could only filter based on it.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:10 AM on March 26, 2005

fmd that was lame
posted by peacay at 7:14 AM on March 26, 2005

Pressed Rat - Apropos of being funny ? Or maybe apropos of the previous post ?

Apropos of the wisdom of children ?

Also, credit for this rightly goes to JHarris
posted by troutfishing at 7:16 AM on March 26, 2005

if you build it, they will come ... sigh
posted by pyramid termite at 7:36 AM on March 26, 2005

Dissed by a five-year old is hilarious.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:41 AM on March 26, 2005

Interesting, but apropo of ...what?

I'd say it's apropos of the 5 year old's idea of cooperation as a way of extending personal power. All you have to do is speak "military", have a clearly identified leader, and things start to blow up!

Ah, from the mouths of babes... (Segue into a potential derail)...The NYT is reporting that "Pentagon Will Not Try 17 G.I.'s Implicated in Prisoners' Deaths".
posted by 327.ca at 7:53 AM on March 26, 2005

Hello all over-exuburant post-babyboom parents!! Hello!

You may have been told by some psychologist that your offspring are the product of genius. Hell, you may even be a psychologist yourself, what with getting a PhD's a direct reflection of your mommy and daddy's ability to juggle two mortgages and your boyfriend's weed hobby while sending you back to school for years on end.

However, I'd like to point out that the product of your loins is just as stupid as you were when you were five, and that everything they do, aside from bodily functions, is a product of their environment and they're just copying it.

Trust me, the little bastards are not original, in any sense. To you, maybe. But to the rest of us, they're just little bastardly squeakers in the damn way of getting ourselves another pint.

Get over yourselves. Take the toy soldiers away, turn off the telly, and give the kid a book to read.

I'm through.
posted by jsavimbi at 8:18 AM on March 26, 2005

My five year old boy does stuff like this; has little army men, uses the authoritarian voice while building stuff and then smashing it all. It's not because he is suffering from (rolls eyes) a "mindless subservience to authority". It's because he's a NORMAL LITTLE BOY. My very learned friend TF doesn't grok little boys I think. 327.ca on the other hand is grokkin' like a muh-fugga.
posted by Scoo at 9:48 AM on March 26, 2005

We did this kind of thing when we were little too, but with big GI Joes. I don't remember ever disobeying an order, or questioning the fight or anything--the fighting and war sound effects and action were all more interesting and fun than thinking about what it was we were emulating. (and that was during Vietnam)

interesting, trout--thanks : >
posted by amberglow at 9:54 AM on March 26, 2005

"My five year old boy does stuff like this; has little army men, uses the authoritarian voice while building stuff and then smashing it all. It's not because he is suffering from (rolls eyes) a "mindless subservience to authority". It's because he's a NORMAL LITTLE BOY. My very learned friend TF doesn't grok little boys I think. 327.ca on the other hand is grokkin' like a muh-fugga."

scoo, i took the interest of the link to be more that after the soldiers obeyed the order they all died, and then the little kid questioned the mindless obeying of orders.

maybe i'm wrong.
posted by knapah at 10:11 AM on March 26, 2005

Hell, you may even be a psychologist yourself, what with getting a Ph.D.'s a direct reflection of your mommy and daddy's ability to juggle two mortgages and your boyfriend's weed hobby while sending you back to school for years on end.

Oh, come on, jsavimbi. You have to know how ridiculous that sounds. I don't know a single person in my Ph.D. program whose mommy and daddy are sending them through school. Maybe for the undergrad degree - but that's getting pretty rare these days.

Trust me, the little bastards are not original, in any sense.

I don't think this was a typical, "my kid shits icecream" story. I think it was more of a, "Jeez. Kids can be kind of insightful, no?" story. I agree with you, they're little hairless monkeys, evolution has equipped them with a cuteness that pokes at the lowest level of our psyche. But they do come up with some pretty cool stuff, sometimes.

they're just little bastardly squeakers in the damn way of getting ourselves another pint.

God. Amen to that. My dad used to have this big gold class ring. Every time my sis and I were misbehaving in public, he slip it down to his second knuckle and lightly whack us on the top of our heads. It was such a slight of hand that no one ever saw him do it. But, my god. It was like getting hit by lightning. I'm not advocating whacking your kids, but the man was a genius and my sister and I are now both well behaved adults who got to go to the movies and fancy restaurants when we were little.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:40 AM on March 26, 2005

Trust me, the little bastards are not original, in any sense.

Well, sometimes they do come up with things that are not directly demonstrated to them. Take, for example, a friend of mine, raising his daughter and trying very hard to focus on how intelligent she is -- telling her she's "very smart, very intelligent", instead of "very pretty, very cute".

Well, she IS a smart kid. Cute, too. And one day they're at the beach, and my friend has some smooth rocks, good for the palm of your hand. And he's laying them out, and trying to teach his daughter to count with them.

So she reaches down, picks up two of the stones, and starts making them have a conversation. Then she starts putting on a play. He was surprised, but then just enjoyed the play.

He told me this story when my wife and I bought her a lego thing that let you put costumes on the characters and put on a play; he said our timing was impeccable.
posted by davejay at 11:05 AM on March 26, 2005

Kids, eh? Ain't they the darndest? Ain't they the cutest? Ain't they the smartest? You know what I think? No, what I really, really think? Why, I think every single kid that's ever been born or ever will be born is a GODDAMNED LITTLE MIRACLE! I really do! "Miracle" is the only word for 'em!

No wonder parents just go on and on and on and on and on and on about their MIRACLE BABEEZ until the rest of us have to drink ourselves into brainless oblivion and take serious mood-altering drugs. Thanks kids! Thanks parents! Keep telling me how awesome they are!

*ties off, shoots up, turns blue, drools on the Axminster*
posted by Decani at 11:22 AM on March 26, 2005

Indeed. A childish view of the military.

Kids are only cute because they are small. You know if a toddler was like 6ft tall and stumbling down the street with that enormous bubble head drooling snot all over his purple and green giant Barney one-zie, people would run screaming in horror. Local news anchors would demand a SWAT team take the monstrous fucker out.

Most little kids are revolting idiots that we are simply forced by primitive unconscious drives and the law to tolerate.

Yes. And mine are no exception.
posted by tkchrist at 2:18 PM on March 26, 2005

Kids are just little people. Some have great personalities, others are gifted. Most are pretty unremarkable.This little one sounds like he has a great sense of irony. IMHO, I like about the same percentage of kids as I do parents, or thirty-year olds, and I'm not admitting how small a percentage that is.

The only real advantage to kids have over adults is that they are seldom narcissitic about their gifted, skilled, talented parents. They don't talk about them at parties, and tell you should adopt parents of your own.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 2:42 PM on March 26, 2005

I guess the threshold for a FPP is pretty low now. Must have missed that memo.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 5:43 PM on March 26, 2005

Steve - I guess you've been out of the loop :

Humor has been officially cleared as Metafilter-worthy.
posted by troutfishing at 8:37 PM on March 26, 2005

I don't know . . . it didn't seem that funny. And I'll laugh at about anything.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 10:15 PM on March 26, 2005

davejay writes "So she reaches down, picks up two of the stones, and starts making them have a conversation. Then she starts putting on a play. He was surprised, but then just enjoyed the play."

YOU WILL NEVAR BE PRESIDINT OF HARVARD AGIAN11!!!11!!
posted by orthogonality at 12:16 AM on March 27, 2005

The kid sounds like Calvin, when is he going to start making snowmen?
posted by MrMulan at 9:15 AM on March 27, 2005

Considering that I originally posted the story (in a comment on the story on Fifteen Elvish Ways To Die, and as noted above), I feel compelled to comment. Must... resist... commenting! Too late!

1. The story isn't interesting because kids are cute. The story is interesting because kids, who must always form their opinions and outlook on the world from the ground up (they do, although parents strive mightily to influence them and often succeed) thus have a path to looking at an institution more objectively than most of us. I've always thought this piece (which I first read like a year ago) was absolutely dead on in its treatment of absolute authority systems -- and the military does rely, a lot, on unquestioned obedience.

2. Dissed By A Five-Year Old is about the same kid. It's also good.

These things said, I thank troutfishing for the props, but are these things really FPP material? I'm new here as a posting member, trying to figure these things out.
posted by JHarris at 6:52 AM on March 28, 2005

You might suspect that the child has a profound insight into blindly obeying others because of this little story, but I will bet you hard currency that this same kid eats bugs or spare change because a bunch of his friends goad him into it.

There's a difference between comprehension and application.
posted by kookywon at 8:37 AM on March 28, 2005

I never ate bugs as a kid, and that nickel I once consumed and which caused my mother and my doctor no end of concern, well I didn't need to be goaded into it -- I had it, I put it in my mouth, I accidently swallowed, end of story.

Hmm... I wonder what a dollar tastes like? (searches for wallet)

Anyway, my point is not all kids are the same, and peer pressure, for whatever reason, didn't play much of role in my own life, or at least, I don't remember it as being such. (Someone could perhaps say something witty in response to that. Ready... go!)
posted by JHarris at 4:59 PM on March 28, 2005

I used to cut limbs off my toy soldiers, paint the stumps red, and play "army hospital" - damned if I know why.
posted by m39 at 1:46 PM on March 29, 2005