America: A nihilistic nursery for kidults of all ages

America is in a schizophrenic mash-up that reverses childhood innocence and adult licentiousness. We treat children as if they were louche, hedonistic adults while we treat grown-ups like they’re still learning primary colors on wooden blocks.

A visit to a restaurant in a tourist town in Vermont crystallized it for me. Stay with me while I set this up, then we’ll take a visit to an eatery I call There Will Be Pictures in Bright, Primary Colors!

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: ‘A sticky-downy sharpie?’

This may be a new thought for some people, this reversal of childhood and adulthood. But it’s easy to see once you have your eyes pointed to it.

‘Drag kids’

America is a country where it’s legal and socially praised to chemically and sexually mutilate abused children. We call these abused children “transgender kids.”

There’s a reason President Trump had to announce that public schools risk losing federal funding if they participate in this depraved farce. It has indeed become normalized to cry happy tears while we watch parents (nearly always mothers) destroy their children’s bodies and minds with hormones, surgeries, and the lie that they can become the opposite sex.

This brutality started with so-called “drag kids”: minor boys dressed up like female prostitutes and paraded in gay bars and before cameras shaking their “moneymakers.” Remember “Desmond Is Amazing,” the “drag kid” featured gyrating and affecting a transvestite hooker attitude? Adults started filming his abuse and putting it on social media in 2015. Within a few years, parents were going beyond dresses and all the way to chemical castration, cross-sex hormones, and actual surgical castration.

Hufflepuff hell

Let’s look at the other side, the childification of adulthood. I started noticing it in the 2010s when fully grown adults were putting bumper stickers on their cars telling everyone what Harry Potter “house” they belonged to. Since when did 30-year-olds cling to a series of children’s books about witches and wizards to “identify” themselves to their grown peers?

We used to look forward to adulthood. But something changed with the Millennial generation: Teenagers were begging to remain children for the first time in history. (Boomers and Gen Xers: This is our fault. We “raised” them.) Sixteen-year-olds once longed for the independence of a driver’s license. Today? Why learn to drive when Uber will cart you around like an entitled toddler (car seat not included)?

These two inversions — the adultification of childhood and the childification of adulthood — collide in a supernova at a restaurant I recently visited, a taco place in one of those Vermont tourist towns tucked between two peaks of the Green Mountains. Let’s call it Ms. Rachel’s Taqueria and Play-Skool.

‘Saccharine babble’

Why “Ms. Rachel’s”? Because the tone of the place is like that awful YouTube woman who sings saccharine babble to babies on YouTube and gets 20 million mothers watching it.

“Ms. Rachel’s” has a lot going for it. The food was great, and the staff were all friendly, which is a rarity in New England these days.

But it’s got a lot going against it too, and that starts with the staff’s stage names. Our waiter was a handsome Irish guy of about 19 years. He announced what I assume is his “Mexican name” to the table behind us.

“Hi there, I’m going to be taking care of you today,” he said to the party next to us. “My name is Hooley-Anne.”

Hooley-Anne’s name was obviously “Julian,” but I suppose that wouldn’t have been “authentic” enough. Hooley-Anne did a great job, but it was impossible to keep a straight face talking to him after this. OK, I confess: I had a giggle attack that had my hands over my face while I cried silently with shaking shoulders.

When the food got there, it arrived on an aluminum baking sheet without utensils.

I asked a kid of about 14 for a knife. He looked at me blankly. So I went native: “A sticky-downy sharpie?”

He brought me a butter knife.

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Tummy trouble

The problems continued with the menus.

“Greens and other fun colors.” “Bevs.”

It got worse when you flipped it over. Apparently adult diners need to be guided through concepts like “appetizers” and “tacos” and “burritos.”

Get it? “Horizontal eats”? In case you didn’t understand special-needs-ese, that means “tacos.” But what about the vertical “eats”?

Tee-hee-giggle-coo! Isn’t it just adorable?

No, it’s insulting. If you’re at least 45 years old, cast your mind back 20 years. I don’t think you remember being regularly spoken to (or written to) in the tone of voice we associate with a “Romper Room” hostess.

Now it’s everywhere. You see it in the ugly faux-cubist “art style” that dominates pamphlets and announcements called “Corporate Memphis.” It’s all over chain restaurant menus that call sandwiches “sammies” (giggle-coo!) or “hand-helds.”

How long until it’s just “eatables”?

Potty humor

The other side of this coin showed up when I went to the bathroom at “Ms. Rachel’s.” Remember, these are the same bathrooms that adults and children use.

There are multiple problems.

1. The restaurant is showing off its woke credentials by conspicuously bragging that it doesn’t care what “gender” you are — you can even be a Sasquatch or an alien (giggle-coo)!

2. “Cute” vulgarity — a cartoon depiction of feces shaped like soft-serve ice cream in a kiddy drawing style — tells children there’s no such thing as respectable public behavior. Potty humor is just normal now, even in a place where you eat.

Yes, I am saying that I think this kind of display harms children. This is the cultural, visual, and conceptual background that is forming children’s character. The adults have abandoned propriety, and they’re shoving it in children’s faces. This may be less extreme than the broad daylight displays of sexual depravity that people call “Pride parades” for “families,” but it’s only a matter of degree.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid old Boomer, even though I’m only 52 (everyone goes from hip-mod-with-it-youth to “stupid Boomer” without stopping at Gen X these days). Why can’t I just let people enjoy things?

Hope I haven’t yucked your yum.

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