Ignorance marching on
Two Salt Lake City sisters, Sadie, 9, and Pyper, 7, protested high gas prices after the family canceled its cable TV to save money because of rising fuel costs. As the AP describes it, cable TV was one of the “budget-cutting casualties” (emphasis mine) and it left the sisters “without their favorite cartoons and shows.” It’s worse than living in Darfur.
The girls marched through downtown Monday chanting and carrying signs made from old campaign signs.
“All of my mom’s monny goes to the gas tank!” Pyper’s sign read. Sadie carried a sign asking drivers to honk to lower gas prices — adding that her mom had to cut “cabel.”
Those aren’t Associated Press typos — the kids spelled “money” as “monny” and “cable” as “cabel.” I don’t care that they’re 7 and 9. It isn’t cute that the little girl spelled “money” as “monny” on her little sign. Kids that age should be able to spell basic words like “money” and “cable.” Maybe if their parents had canceled cable TV long ago and made their kids pick up a book once in a while, Sadie and Pyper could have mounted a correctly spelled protest. Hey parents, the library is free.
“Gas prices are too high,” Sadie said. “I just decided to come and protest so they’d go down.” Mom and dad, while you’re at the library trying to teach your kids to spell, pick up some books about cause and effect, so little Sadie will have some idea about how the world works. She isn’t three. A nine-year-old should be on the way to getting a clue and should at least know that honking horns cannot lower gas prices. That isn’t fair of me. Cause and effect is apparently beyond the grasp of most of your adult neighbors. Maybe share the books with them.
The girls got some waves and a few thumbs-up to show support.
“I think it’s great,” said Hamid Tayeb, who was walking past on his lunch break. “It’s unfortunate that kids are doing it before we do.”
It is appalling that anyone would give a thumbs up to such ignorance on display — way to encourage the kids who were only motivated because they lost their cable TV and who can’t spell. More appalling is the man who only laments that adults weren’t out there first with their own misguided and misspelled signs.
Also, Sadie and Pyper are annoying names for children.
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I think you hit the nail on the head, though you should have given it a stout kick as well.
Pyper.
It is obvious that she comes by her intellectual prowess honestly.
Obviously you are referring to the ‘y’ replacing the ‘i’ naming trend…
Myndi, Brandi, Bryttany, Cyndi…
and not the name itself — very cutsie, very annoying.
Thank goodness I spelled my daughter’s name (Piper) with an ‘i’.
She’s a smart girl.
What’s in a name? People should call their kids whatever they want. My son doesn’t have the most common name. But the spelling trendiness is what annoys me with Pyper. And Sadie is an old-lady name. My great grandmother was Sadie. I realize that these things are arbitrary, cultural, all that, but for now at least, for me, Sadie, Ethel, Beatrice are not names for little kids.
I’m sure your daughter is brilliant. And I suspect that even were she not, you wouldn’t let her march around with a sign that said “monny.”
You are correct, Jody.
It is a prejudice I don’t even try to fight anymore.
I am a firm believer that Pyper, because of the ‘y’, is more likely to earn a living on a strippers pole than in a laboratory. If the article above is any indication, her parents are going to be telling all their friends, “She is working her way through college.”
Before I could comment again I had to ask my daughter (10) to spell money. Whew — she aced it. I see no poles in her future.
Now, I named my son Brandt (17) after the great Rembrandt van Rijn and the closest he has come to living up to his namesake is a great love of paintball. And he happened to make sixty bucks at the bowling alley last weekend on a dare to — you guessed it — pole dance. He’s working his way through college.
Scott on a more serious note you are right.
I would be appalled if either of my children paraded around the town square protesting the unfairness of losing Cartoon Network — with or without misspelled words.
With so many in need in this country and elsewhere, going without real necessities such as food and housing, Pyper and Sadie’s demonstration is a sad reminder of the inherent self-serving nature that Americans, young and old, exhibit when their illusory rights are violated.
I would certainly be more forgiving if the signs they carried had read, “Please help our neighbor Cyndi! Her mommy doesn’t have gas monny to take her to the doctor!”
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