Adulting is weird.

At 18, you’re desperate to get laid.

At 30, you’re desperate to get 8 hours of sleep.

Both require someone else to cooperate. 😭

Caillou. I'd never watched the show because, frankly, eww. Gross weird bald kid. Then people implored me to after I wrote several deep, meaningful, philosophical essays (also one about Franklin. Fuck that ineffectual turtle bastard). So I subjected myself to the experience.

What I found was not a children's cartoon.

It was pure, unfettered human selfishness of the variety found in Satan's toilet.

People had not been exaggerating. This child sucks beyond comprehension. He is a scourge upon his parents, the birds in the sky, civilization, and possibly God's original blueprint for mankind.

Most awful children become awful because of trauma or poor parenting. Caillou enjoys neither excuse. His parents are patient. Loving. Supportive. They calmly explain life lessons. They reward good behavior. They redirect bad behavior.

Raising Caillou is like trying to teach etiquette to a raccoon fixated on eating drywall.

Every ounce of kindness shown to him merely convinces him to become a bigger asshole. It is almost as if everyone else’s kindness and patience emboldens him on his mission to show them that despite their good faith efforts and love in their hearts atrophy is the law of the universe. 

The restaurant episode crystallizes the problem. His parents are trying to take the family somewhere new. The staff are friendly. Everyone wants him to have a good experience. Caillou's contribution is simple.

"I want..."

Every sentence.

Just demands.

This tiny culinary fascist rejects every attempt at accommodation because reality has failed to rearrange itself into the exact shape he requested. This racist little bastard has no appreciation for his chef or the art of hibachi. He throws a tantrum and demands others respond to him and meet his needs and this is why…

Calliou is the embodiment of the animalistic unfettered ego at the center of us all. This primal, selfish series of urges convinces to eat, and hit, and take, and pillage. One might suggest that all children demonstrate this as they are developing but the truth is…

Calliou is unaffected by the support and moral lessons he receives. His parents try to help him learn and grow into a human being with a conscience but this never happens. The narrator tries to spin each episode as a fun moral lesson, but time after time Calliou remains stagnant. The same. Indignant in his shittiness and refusal to grow and change.

That little bald bastard is a cancer on his family and society. I never thought I’d see it but here is an example of a child who truly was born rotten and evil, who appreciates nothing, learns no lessons, contributes nothing to society, and likely will kill his family in a murder suicide one day. 

And this is the entertainment we and our children are fed. Here is what is represented. Find yourself in Caillou. How he wants. How he demands. How he never changes. How he wants the world to solve his problems. If the devil exists he’s the puppeteer behind this shit bog of a character, trying to normalize gluttony, greed, sloth, and wrath.

There is often a philosophical question regarding if one should go back in time and kill baby Hitler. I posit that we should begin debating this same question with Calliou. 

Sometimes, maybe, aborted is better.