Ebay Auctions and stupid people

After her fifth or sixth try, a woman from Arkansas has failed in her attempt to auction off naming rights for her child on Ebay.

Dumbbell!!

The child isn't the responsibility of the buyers and sellers on Ebay, nor should the right and privilege of naming the child be that of the winner of a tawdry auction.

Would she have really named her child Frisket Persnickety if that was the "winning" bidders' choice?

How about Poopy von Poopy?

I have seen names foisted upon innocent children that are abominations. Then I ask myself "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING??? ANYTHING??"

I can understand selling old boat motor parts and the back sissy bar to an old Honda motorcycle. Those are commodities for sale.

But the name that a child must bear through life and by which they will be called can be a source of pride OR ridicule.

No one makes it through childhood completely unscathed. Bullies are part of the price we pay for learning to stand up for ourselves, and sometimes for others.

But the deliberate attempt to garner money to pay for what I believe to be a sacred right to name your own offspring smacks of more than crass commercialism and greed.

It is a sickening example of how children are not precious anymore, but simply a way to get what an adult wants until the child is no longer of use to them. What happens when this deluded woman decides she needs more money to pay for things in her life?

Will she stop at naming rights, or simply auction off the children themselves?

It may sound extreme, but there are nations in the world where that DOES happen. A child is sold off to provide convenience or comfort for adults who are just plain stupid.

I can't blame the Ebay people for having an auction site. But I do blame them for allowing the idiotic woman past the front door on her feeble attempt to gain monetarily not once or twice but up to SIX TIMES by auctioning the naming rights.

This isn't a ball field or a convention center! This is a child we are talking about!!

While she may have thought this was a cute or funny thing to do, I wonder how this child will be feeling in a few years to discover that she didn't think enough of him/her to carefully, lovingly and prayerfully select a name that spoke of love, of family or of tradition.

I do hope that someone will help this mother to understand the sacred nature of the obligation of parenting that is more than just the procreation part of the equation.

And I hope and pray that people in our world will have better sense than to even bid on these kinds of horrible auctions. When the media stops publishing the information and when others refuse to pander to that lowest element in order to satiate their poor choices, I believe there will be much less of these kinds of displays of stupidity in our world.

And while the baby may not get a name that is universally appealing, at least he/she will get the satisfaction of knowing that the name that was given was done so through a feeling of love and excitement rather than through the highest bidder and the flight of fancy heaped upon them because of it.

One bit of advice for the mother to be, online baby name sites are available for free. Sure, it won't pay your bills to name your child in a conventional way, but it will at least be one less thing for the kid to discuss with his therapist.

I'm sure there will be lots of other topics to discuss anyway.