(This one turned out longer than I thought it would. This stuff would normally be found on the Best of Mad Cal Rants Extended Version.)

I like kids. That's one of the requirements of youth ministry. But there are 2 groups of kids I dislike.

1. Dumbass kids. This is the major reason I won't go into teaching (Lots of props to public school teachers though). 4th graders who can't do 9+4 when their math homework inolves division. 7th graders who can't read books without big pictures. It would be different if these kids actually tried to do the work, but they seem to think it's okay not to. Actually I am more mad at their parents. I will rant more about this some other day, once the book I'm writing on this topic is done. So far, it is 12 pages long.

2. Kids who try to punk me and think they can run things. Today's episode of What Happens When You Get Cal Mad involves one of these kids.

One 11 year old boy named D always thinks he's a tough guy. He's constantly hitting me, knowing that I can't hit him back. He always talks back, even telling me to shut up, then when I call him on it, he pretends he said something else or gives the I wasn't talking to you excuse. D is one of those kids who acts real nice in front of the women staff, but like a real jerk with the guy staff. Several times, I warned him he better watch how he acts and what he says to me because I'm tired of being nice to him, and he'll give the I won't do it again crap to me.

So tonight while I'm driving all the kids home in the van, he thinks he's being funny by making me drive him around to his friend's house instead of taking him home, so I tell him I'm not driving him home and he will have to walk in the rain from the King's Club. D thought I was kidding so he didn't apologize and kept his antics going and assumed I would drop him off after I took all the other kids home.

I drop off all the other kids except D. I park the van back at the center and get ready to drop off one of my co-workers in my car. D assumes I'm taking him home in my car. I remind him of a few of the shut up comments and tell him he better start walking, but he hops into my car anyways. I drop off my co-worker and tell D it's his last chance to get out and walk because my house is farther away than where we are now. He still thinks I'm kidding around, so I start driving...right past his house all the way home. I thought he was going to say something when I started getting farther away from his house, but he didn't.

I get ready to go inside the house and D thinks we're going to hang out a while and asks me when am I going to take him home. That's when I blasted him with something like 'I'm not taking you home. I warned you and I didn't appreciate the way you treat me, so you better just call your mom to pick you up, cause I'm not taking your crap anymore.' (I said it in a not so nice way.) He started crying. Mission accomplished. Then I took him home.

Was it mean to make an 11 year old kid cry? Yes.
Do I feel bad about it? No.
Will I get fired from my job if someone at work reads my blog? Maybe. (I think 42% of all blogs had that story linked or posted.)
Will this kid ever try to punk me again? Better not.

It's not that I want kids to fear me because that's not making me an effective minister to them. Kids respect and obey their parents because they get whippings or other punishments if they don't. Somehow they feel if your name is not Mom or Dad (sometimes even if your name is Mom or Dad), they can treat you however they want with no consequences. This is a real problem for the future. 8 year old girls try to boss other people (including adults) around and threatening to slap people all the time. 6th graders cursing out teachers. High schooler going around thinking they can do what they want whenver they want.

The youth may be our future, but the bad parents of the present sure aren't helping. Read more on this topic in my soon to be released book titled Mad Cal: The Book. Buy this book along with my poker book and save on shipping.

(Note: Good parents do exist, but the good they do cannot offset the evils of bad parenting.)