Our dear friend Richard (of www.richardland.com) – ever able to turn every day life into an adventure in comedy – recently flipped on the camera in order to capture the musings of his young nephew, Riley, on a not-so-rainy day:
(Click to view)
Uncle Rich, video camera in hand, and his seven (going-on-twenty-seven) year old accomplice begin chatting about random topics, when Riley suddenly cuts himself short as he glances to something out of the camera’s view and scrunches his brow in disgust.
“Don’t do the lipgloss!” he cries out.
True to form, Richard pans the camera to where his nephew’s eyes are fixed: In the backyard where two dogs are finishing a friendly backyard poke. He pretends not to know what his nephew could possibly mean: “Lipgloss?” He queries, feigning confusion.
“Lipstick.” Riley corrects himself, referencing his pet’s phallus (either that, something he heard in Garden State or South Park, or both) before following up with the inevitable query with an impish smile:
“Why exactly does that happen?”
“I really don’t know,” Richard responds, with a sigh and a laugh.
Knowing full well that his question was going to be met with a dead end prior to even having asked it, Riley presses no further, but instead indicates that he’d rather discuss dogs on a more general level than their impromptu afternoon quickies.
Clearly well read for his age, he declares in his own way how deplorable he finds pitbull fighting to be. However, he doesn’t call it “pitbull fighting”. Rather, he describes the practice in depth: From the fact that two dogs are made to fight one another to the death, to the reality of how either dog will ultimately meet his demise, inasmuch that the owners murder the animals unwilling or unfit to fight.
Playing devil’s advocate, Uncle Richard sees an opportunity to probe the mind of his young relative by pretending to think with a mindset opposing either of their own.
“Well, what should happen to people who do that? Just go to jail and that’s it?” Richard asks from behind the camera.
“No. They should be put,” Riley begins, trying to think of a justifiable eye-for-an-eye form of penalization, “… in a room.. and have the dogs go at them!”
“Ahh… so they should have to be in a pitbull fight?”
“Yeah!”
“Mhmmm. So, what if you’re… I dunno,” Richard pretends to think of a somewhat random scenario, “A football player though? Shouldn’t you get a second chance?”
Riley shakes his head, puzzled at the prospect. (He’s been playing with what looks like football gear in his own size for some time during the video; So we all know he enjoys football – even if Richard may have incidentally asked him to hold onto it in order to clue the rest of the audience in to that fact.)
“Actually,” he states in a very matter-of-fact manner, “there is a football player who did that.”
“What?! Really?!” Richard commits to a dumbfounded reaction at the coincidence of his hypothetical scenario matching something real.
“Yeah! He got arrested!”
“But he should get a second chance though, right?
“Why?” Riley answers with a question of his own.
“Well, because… he plays football…I think that’s the argument. And also! And also… he’s like ‘Hey, I’m sorry’. And saying sorry makes everything automatically okay, doesn’t it?”
Riley’s confused look at Richard’s attempt to follow “non-logic” requires no caption. Even a seven year old can deduce that “I’m sorry” does not the panacea make, especially with respect to the heinous acts in question.
And don’t get me wrong, Riley is a smart kid, but he’s no savant from what I’ve seen and heard. He’s just a typical seven year old for this day and age. Does he know more than I did at age seven? Absolutely. Has the world, however, with respect to technology and the availability of instant-information via internet changed dramatically since I was seven? Absolutely and a half.
For instance, although he was well versed on current events, it was refreshing to know that the copulation of his furry friends didn’t fail to faze him. I half expected a comment from him indicating that he knew exactly what they were doing, why, or how they all could expect one of the dogs to end up knocked up sooner or later.
But he’s just a typical seven year old who hopefully won’t learn about that for another few years.
Thus, what we can take away from the Rich and Riley dialogue is that even a seven year old knows that a simple apology is not justification – so any idiot of an adult should know it too. So what is proper punishment?
Well, if you went to my college, cut in front of the other undergraduate peons in the cafeteria, and got other special privileges all the way, I would say that all of that was in order to help you successfully achieve your degree and excel at your sports scholarship.
I mean, all those extras must mean you were studying just as diligently as you were practicing football. What was your degree in again? It was something other than underwater basket weaving, right? So, how about we be really cruel and make idiot football players actually use those college degrees they probably didn’t truly even earn!
While Riley’s creative punishment would be perfect justice for our nameless hypothetical football player, in the meantime, I’ll settle for something simple: E-“Vick”tion from the NFL altogether and indefinitely.
<3~A