This entire situation is why Lane cannot live anywhere but rural environs. In the country we have a way of dealing with these things, but our behavior wouldn’t fly elsewhere.

The type of parent who raises a child who not only sits obtusely at the bottom of the slide to ruin the fun for everyone else but also then goes to the mother of the child who finally slides into him to tattle on that child is just not someone I can deal with or be around. Life is too short.

When nature arranges for a certain animal to have what amounts to a “Kick Me” sign taped to his back, the just response of the natural world is to kick that animal until he loses the desire to be kicked. This is what happens in the barnyard, anyway.

But human civilization seems to want to reward this behavior.