What is the world coming to?

Tonight, we had a rare occasion, a family (whole family) dinner. We were sitting at a local Italian restaurant after ordering out Pizza and a family comes in and sits down at the table next to us. And before they were all seated, the mother had pulled out the portable DVD player and placed it in-front their little girl.

This was a first for me. I know that you are not "Cool" parents unless the Minivan you are driving has a better entertainment system than most homes, but I have never seen someone bring the entertainment system inside.

Seeing this made my Father ask "how did we ever do it, growing up without all the entertainment systems?" This is a real question. Growing up, I had a gameboy and I would play it in the car on trips, but as soon as it was dark, the gameboy was useless and I had to either sleep or learn how to carry on conversations with whoever else was in the vehicle. So, I learned how to hold my own in a conversation, I picked up on random knowledge (of which my parents are full of) or just sang along with all the songs on the radio.

Recently, I saw wall-e. If you haven't seen it, the movie centers around a robot who is living on earth after it has been so trashed by humanity. Well after trashing earth, the human population went into space, and lived life inside of a massive spaceship. With life on the ship, people had to do nothing and everyone became extremely overweight.

It seems to me that what this mother decided to do to control her child is going to lead to her child being a mindless drone, someone who cannot carry on a conversation or know how to express herself.

And that makes me sad.