More Signs That Californication May Still Happen to Idaho

Two signs today that Idaho may be heading down the California path.

1. I pulled into the parking lot at the store today to get a prescription filled--and ended up parking between two new Mercedes-Benz sedans. One of them was the S550, the full-sized version that costs a mere $87,575. Of course, the woman getting out of the Mercedes with her baby was in her mid-20s. I fear that the excesses of wealth are arriving. Widespread poverty is bad for a society; excesses of wealth are bad, too.

2. Shortly before we left the San Francisco Bay Area, I noticed that there were now services that transported children by van from San Francisco to Sacramento for broken families. Today I heard a radio ad for a similar service for moving kids from broken homes where one parent living in Twin Falls, and the other in the Boise area.

The company is Child Safe Transportation, and let me emphasize that I am not criticizing that they provide this service. I am criticizing parents who let their marriages get to the point where divorce makes sense--and then move three hours away from the other parent and their kids. It's bad enough that the marriage ends in divorce; now, on top of the rest of the tragedy, some kid is being transported back and forth across the state.

Please:

• before you say something mean to your spouse;
• before you decide that hot little number in accounting might be worth chatting up;
• before you decide that your depression can only be solved by telling your spouse to move out;
• before you decide that your desire for a drink or another toke of pot is more important than your marriage;

think about what is going to happen to your kids. This is important; it is about a lot more than you, your spouse, or both of you combined. You are adults; you will pick up the pieces, and move on. Your kids are going to spend decades recovering from this.