You got to mean it or they won't shut up

If you say "Shut up or we're leaving," you better be prepared to follow through. Otherwise, that four-year-old just called your bluff and you're sitting there with a pair of deuces and he's raking in the pot.

Look. Your kids know that unless you plan to follow through on your threats, they have the upper hand. They have an incredible grasp of psychology.

I was trying to cash a check for a man Saturday and his child was literally running around screaming at the top of his lungs. The man kept telling the kid "Behave. I don't know what's wrong with you."

I had problems with the check because he had folded it and gotten it wet, so the check machine was having trouble reading the numbers.

The kid is screaming and yelling and running around and the man never raises his voice going "I need you to behave. I think you're tired. I'm talking to you. I need you to listen to me. Look at me. I'm being serious now. I need you be quiet."

Dude. Seriously. Grab the little howler monkey and put your hand over its mouth.

Or say "I'm sorry, we need to leave, can I get my check back?"

It is your responsibility to make your children behave in public. And if you can't control them at four, how will you control them at 14?

Stuff your howler back in the cage

If you cannot keep your howler monkey muzzled and on a leash in public, I will whip out my ticket pad and write you a contempt of the Howler Monkey Code ticket on the spot.

Ok. I understand that you feel your troop of womb fruit is entitled to a precious few minutes outside the walls of its cage, where it is usually busy ripping paper, tearing the leaves off branches and flinging poo.

HOWEVER, that does not entitle you to bring the five-strong troop into the Starbucks at 9 a.m. (don't howler monkeys have to go to some sort of monkey school) and inflict the entire out-the-door line of people desperately in need of a double espresso with the sight of your crotchlings making faces at a barista because their tall frappuccinos were not made the way "they wanted them" - all five of them.

Look woman. There is a SYSTEM. You order it. They make it. It is NOT their problem if you are incapable of ordering correctly or if your child suddenly decides she doesn't want a "white" frappuccino at 9 a.m.

One of your little crotchlings pranced up to the bar and snatched her sugar bomb off the counter. She walked four feet back to the FOUR plush armchairs your children had planted themselves in and said "It is WHITE. It's not supposed to be white."

Your other four brats apparently didn't care about color of their 870 calories, but she took it back and repeated what she ordered. They re-made her vanilla creme frappuccino. WHICH IS WHITE. It came right back out white to.

She took this one off the bar, made numerous funny faces at it and prissed back over to her pack. "It's still white," I could her whispering, like it was a conspiracy. And she refused to drink it. Well, you really ought to know what the hell you're ordering.

-- Don't let your howler monkeys run around Starbucks at 9 a.m. No one appreciates them.
-- Teach your howler monkeys to eat what they are given. Better yet, don't give them 870 calories of sugar-bomb at 9 a.m.
-- If you got five howlers loaded up in the car, do the drive-thru!

Dangerous Howlers Within

If you see a CAUTION sign, please restrain your howler. It will NOT be our fault if your vagina fruit becomes incapacitated or otherwise dies because you are stupid.

A bottle of pool chemicals managed to burst open Sunday. We put out the orange caution cones and liberally applied paper towels to staunch the flow of "trip and fall" accidents. We call maintenance, but they have to finish a clogged toilet.

While I'm helping customers, I see a woman put her child down - TO PLAY ON THE MOUND of paper towels with chemical fumes rising from it!

I start asking "Is that your son?" When I get a yes, I look right at her and go "Ma'am, those are chemicals. Bleach and pool chemicals. We have caution cones and maintenance is on the way. I really need you to please ask your little boy to come away from there."

She gives me the evil eye and goes "Well I guess you better come here then Billy." She holds him for a minute then he wriggles down and tries to run right back to start jumping on the pile of paper towels. I look right at her and hit her with a stare that would make a Medusa shriek with pain. She goes over and grabs him.

OK. You see three caution cones and a gigantic mountain of paper towels the size of Mount Doom. The smell would knock over a horse. You need to get control over your crotch fruit. Or do you have it trained so well that you can see a potential lawsuit and you just want to have the spawn break a leg and start suing?

If you cannot control it, or if you cannot teach it to behave in public, leave it at home.

Please do not feed the howler monkeys

If your howler is already screeching like a banshee, do not give it any more sugar.

I had a woman come through my line at the Wal-Mart last weekend wanting to do a return. She had six items on four receipts to return and a howler monkey straight from the bowels of hell.

This little minx, named Brittany, was a babbler, a toucher, scrambler and a screamer par excellence.

She touched every single thing on the counter, my debit reader, everything on the register next to mine, she babbled on and on to her mother, she kept trying to ride a returned bicycle and then she tried to climb back into the buggy. Then she started wandering around to talk to a kid in a stroller who was three back in line. "Mommy, look, a little boy."

The mother - who obviously failed at teaching the child to sit still and shut up - kept saying "be still Brittany" or "Now Brittany" or "Come back here Brittany." Brittany know who the boss is. It ain't this poor, tired, sad mommy.

I'm racing through this return as fast as I can when I hear Hapless Mommy say "Brittany, come back and be still and we'll go get ice cream as soon as this is done."

I look straight at that woman and go "Ma'am, I really don't think she needs any more sugar today."

If your howler monkey is already hopped up on sweets, do not give them more. You are just making things worse.

Jesus. Learn to parent, not appease. It didn't work for the British and the French in 1938. It won't work for parents in 2007.

Who's the boss? You or your howler

You are an adult. Act like one. Begging a child to behave in a public space is simply degrading.

I don't even have to deconstruct your life or follow you home to know that you are probably a bad parent - or at least an overworked one. Your older howler already has a hand-held video game that he won't even look up from. The younger howler sitting in the grocery buggy has not one but three action figures.

The fact that you can't pry these things out of their hands for a fifteen-minute run into the grocery store to buy milk and cat food shows that you failed Parenting 101: Setting Limits.

The older howler plops down on an unused grocery bag turnstile and starts playing his game. The line moves past him there are now several people in between you and him. You call his name. He looks at you and goes back to his game. Ha. Who's got the power in this little drama? It sure ain't you.

You call his name again. Same thing happens. You raise your voice and start to get whiny "Howler, will you please come here." He gives you a dirty look and goes back to his game. This continues until you are yelling at him to come over. Which he finally does with a sigh and another dirty look.

Ma'am - your howler monkey is already ignoring you at nine years old. You are waging a war of wills with him - IN PUBLIC - and losing. Imagine what's going to happen when he really starts making trouble.

You can't get him to close his video game and walk 10 feet - at age nine. At age 16 your voice will be nothing more than static in his ears - if it isn't already.

Take the video games and action figures away from your howler monkeys. Talk to them. Read to them. Books is gud! Because today's howler monkeys are smarter, meaner, more conniving and far, far more vicious than you would ever imagine they can be. If you aren't in control of them by age 5, you are never going to be!