Losing Benjamin's Buttons

You know that fellow Weird Al Yankovic, right?  He does polka-flavored song parodies and he is funny.  He must be; he's been around since the late 70s and he's still getting laughs.

Interesting fact about Al: he confirmed to Howard Stern that he has never cursed, never sworn.  I'll be damned if I can make that claim, but good for him.  Besides profanity, he also is a stranger to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

Again.

Anyway, Al recently created a dialogue online by stating that his teenaged daughter Nina makes a habit of buying mice from the pet store - those little mice that are sold as snake food - and releasing them into nature.

That's what she wants to do with her allowance, and that's her business, right?  And it ended then and there, right?  And no one piped up with a word in opposition and went back to reading and listening to fine music, correct?

Oh, did the sluice gates open! People took time to put down their hamburger and type that the young lady was wasting her time, that owls would eat the mouse she just set free by the time ten minutes went by, that she was making some snake go hungry...on and on they ranted, and I sincerely hope that young Ms Yankovic did not see these words, or care much about them if she did.

We've become too cynical if telling a 14-year old that trying to do something to help an animal is a foolish waste of time. 

It seems to me that if we aged backwards, like in that Benjamin Button movie, and lived in a sardonic manner as children, and then grew out of that and acted with childlike innocence by the time we entered the workforce and mated, things might be nicer.

Especially for the mice!