Future + Children

It must be one of the more well-worn cliches that our children "are the future." This would seem self-evident, as without children our race would die out. Without children, there is no one to appreciate or keep alive the legacy of the parents. Without children, there are no new human eyes that still behold creation with wonder and delight and teach their parents to marvel again. And yet, as self-evident as this truth would seem to be, we as a society are shockingly negligent of "the future."

Alec Baldwin and the Children

Alec Baldwin rubs me the wrong way. He just does. Sure, he can be kinda funny sometimes (the movie Elizabethtown comes to mind), but he is to me like petting a cat the wrong way (the cat being me, of course.) So I naively thought that I could escape the man by simply not watching any movies or shows he is in. I was wrong.

Random Cute Non-Obese Child

I was listening to some radio program recently on my local station, and the commercial break came up. And lo and behold, a PSA came on starring (you guessed it) my favorite star. His Baldwinian gravelly opening words were something like, "Like any parent, I worry about the health of our nation's children." He went on to talk about obesity rates among children and eating healthy, and ended by plugging whatever foundation was sponsoring him.

Once the mind-numbing effect of the PSA wore off (they all seem to be mind-numbing, regardless of their content), I was left with an oddly uneasy feeling. What was wrong?