Bonkers

I am forever amazed at the will power of parents that spend their weekends ferrying the kids around from one sporting event to another. In Sydney traffic, no less. It’s a formula for mental illness.

I met one today, an Uber driver. He works as a chef and Ubers on the side for extra cash. And the weekends are otherwise taken up with the free Ubering of his four kids to swimming, nippers, surfing, soccer, ballet, and a couple of others I can’t recall.

He admitted that he lives in a state of absolute tiredness and boredom on weekends (since only soccer and surfing hold any interest for him).

I queried the motivation behind the free Ubering of the kids.

After a little dialog, and he was a very chatty and nice fellow, we discovered that his supposed motivation was that his father hadn’t spent much time with him as a kid, and he wished that he had.

I countered that my dad hadn’t spent much time with me either and it had never occurred to me to (a) wish that he had, and (b) wreak revenge upon my own child henceforth.

The excuse, the one about his father, seemed a little canned to be honest. Well practised, if you like.

I prefer to believe that he and his wife simply want to keep up with all the other mad parents that measure their worth through association with, and mimicking of the mad parents of their kid’s friends.

I am totally convinced that the whole driving/parent/mortgage belt of Sydney is completely bonkers.

Nice people almost to a fault and yet they seem to hate themselves in a very passive aggressive fashion.

Collectively, it’s as if they are racing towards some clearly defined anti-Buddhist state of communion.

But I don’t think that a single one of them truly believes there is any alternative. I don’t know why they travel overseas if they don’t learn anything from dropping into other cultures.

Maybe it’s all those vaccinations that have done certain parts of their brains in. There has to be an explanation.