Monday, September 13, 2010

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

We now lived in a world that mostly fall into a region called “the gray area.” Lots of standards have been redefined that many people have mistakenly identified bad as something passable. Though obviously bad, that they have been labeled as modern should make them widely accepted.

So what is wrong with this picture? Pooh Bear mug, obviously directed to kids. But a Cappuccino Tumbler? What was in the mind of the one who conceptualized this product? Are they really expecting me to allow my 9-year-old to a heaping tumbler of Cappuccino? 

What are kids into these days that brought about this idea they need a caffeine boost via a Pooh Bear coffee tumbler? Too much PSP?

Or have I remained in the dark ages without knowing it? Has coffee become the in-thing for kids as well and I simply missed that trend? I find this all confusing.

I am still trying to figure out the Starbucks concessionaire that I once mentioned in an earlier blog. I do not know if the whole idea was misplaced or that it is now perfectly acceptable for kids as young as 7 to be identified to a coffee shop. OK they serve non-coffee drinks to, I assume, appease children brought in by their coffee crazy parents.

For indeed, coffee will not be coffee if accompanied by screams from a bored kid. Which is exactly why I have coffee when the whole house is still asleep. So give that child some brain-freeze-caramel-flavored-massively-topped-whipping-cream frappe-stuff to stunt any intended wailing while we enjoy our Macchiato. Isn't all these comfy? This is perhaps why coffee shops have turned into family zones. 

Still, in spite of all the modernity, the fact remains that the future is not about gray areas. What brings us there is our ability to identity bad from good. We have all the tools to be able to do that. And we are far more educated now to really be contented, even accept, that good enough can pass off as excellent.

And as a parent, even at the expense of sounding like some blast from the puritanical past, it is my responsibility to be able to define the lines clearly to my young child. There is no future for fence sitters. The future belongs to those who have a clear view of what is good and excellent and work towards it.

So what about that confused Pooh Mug? Ah, it now belongs to this coffee crazy father.