Overzealous parents

	Sometimes parents amaze me by their total lack of foresight and
 intelligence.  I just can’t believe some of the stuff that they do that 
can totally ruin their and other people’s children’s lives.  Parents say 
that they are acting in the best interests of their children but never stop
 to think that perhaps their "children" have the ability to think and make
 decisions for themselves.  I know not all parents are like this.  Hell, 
some parents can be really cool, those that allow their offspring to make 
their own mistakes and think for themselves.  But I really hate those 
parents that think they absolutely HAVE TO be a party to anything their 
kids are involved in, and watch over them like guardian angels--ever 
insuring that they are not allowed to view anything that their parents find 
offensive or that expresses views that differ from their own.  I am so glad 
to be out of High School where these parents hold supreme authority, even 
over the school administrators and teachers.
	I didn’t always feel this way, but I recently learned of an 
incident that thoroughly convinced me that some parents should just be 
locked up.
	The only way I can really explain what I am talking about is if I 
start at the beginning.  Last April, myself and a group of drama students 
from my high school went to our high school conference’s annual Drama 
Festival at Willamette University.  I was expecting an uneventful day, past 
festivals had been decidedly dull.  During the course of the day we were 
told that we would be viewing a play written by a graduate student in which 
he starred, we were also repeatedly warned that the play contained a little 
foul language and a brief view of a guy’s posterior.  Our director told us 
several times that if any of us wanted to leave we could and repeated the 
warnings about the language and partial nudity.  
	The whole time I couldn’t get over the fact that us high schoolers 
were being treated like adults after having been so carefully secluded from 
the more offensive aspects of life.  We were actually being given the 
choice to watch the play, and I don’t seem to remember anyone declining.
	
	The play itself was really well written, oral sex was mentioned, as 
was drinking and partying, but all were in good taste and not overly 
accentuated.  Then came the part I’m sure everyone there was waiting for, 
the butt.  My friends and I will always remember that play as "the butt 
play."  No one could figure out how you could possibly get some guy into a 
situation onstage where his posterior would absolutely have to be revealed, 
but  we were soon enlightened.  One of the actors onstage started talking 
about a recurring dream he was having, he said he had been seeing his uncle 
playing the guitar naked, and out strode a young man wearing nothing but a 
guitar and a smile.  He started to play and was actually quite good, his 
song was about a fairy who goes around making people fat, and out strode a 
long-haired guy wearing a tutu and waving a glitter wand around.  It was 
the most hilarious thing I had ever seen and it totally fit in with the 
play.  Everyone loved it, and the director/writer/actor received a standing 
ovation when it was over.
	I suppose he could have changed the line about the guy’s dream to 
something about his uncle playing his guitar in his underwear, and the 
guitar man could have been a little less uncovered, but he didn’t.  He 
didn’t want to sacrifice his artistic integrity and I admire that.
	But the really stupid part didn’t happen until months later, and I 
didn’t even hear about it until a couple weeks ago.  I found out that some 
parents at one of the schools in attendance had heard about the play and 
made a few calls to the administration.  That school then said that they 
would not send any of their students to the drama festival this year if it 
were held at Willamette U.  So, thanks to a lack of a facility in which to 
hold it, this year’s drama festival was canceled.  Here we had been 
courting WU for 3 years to let us hold the festival there every year and 
now some overzealous parents had gone and ruined it, not only for their 
kids, not even only for the other drama students at their school, but for 
all of the drama students at seven schools.  
	This to me is outrageous, it’s not like we were tricked into 
watching the play, it’s not like we weren’t given any warning.  We were 
told time and time again what the play contained and were given countless 
opportunities to leave both before and during the play.
	I’m surprised these parents even allowed their kids outside the 
house to get involved in drama in the first place.
	I’m sure the kids knew that their parents would not like them 
seeing what they were seeing, and they should have had the sense to leave 
then, or at least not tell their parents about it.  I do believe that the 
parents were within their rights to get angry, they had every right to.  
But they should have gotten angry at their children who didn’t have the 
sense to leave when they were warned.  They should punish their children 
and only their children and not impose their wills upon others.  
	Some parents really need to lighten up and let their kids think for 
themselves and make their own mistakes.  I think that by high school, most 
kids are mature enough to see a view of some guy’s ass and not get 
corrupted.  But if their parents don’t want them seeing it, they are 
perfectly within their rights to shelter their children from the world 
outside by locking them in a closet or perhaps by just not allowing them to 
go to the next drama festival, but they do not have the right to keep 
everyone else’s kids from attending a potentially educational and character-
building experience.  For those people I have a message from all of the 
open-minded people of the world:  Lighten up, and try and peek out from 
beneath your sheltered existence once in a while.  You never know, you 
might even like it.