As tempted as I am to let fly with a rant about the inadequacies of the current Canadian Family Law system, I will hold my tongue in order to talk about something a lot more important.

The guy who only spoke Klingon to his child.

Now, on the face of it, this is obviously a horrible parenting idea. You’ve taught your child to speak in not only a fictional, albeit fully developed, language. But you’ve also ensured that the transition to society will be awkward and much harder than any other child will experience.

But here’s the thing: it’s not quite the significant aberration it appears to be. It stands out, primarily because the language spoken is based on science fiction. And that makes it weird. But why?

Is it weird to indoctrinate your child to a set of concepts and values that are based on a fictional history? Only if you consider any religious upbringing to be weird. Christians are teaching their children that there is an Invisible Sky-Wizard who judges everything you do and will treat you accordingly.

In fact, the weird part would seem to be the fact that this Dad isn’t a Star Trek fan, who simply viewed it as an interesting scientific experiment. But even that doesn’t seem so strange, considering people try whatever experimental parenting technique is currently in vogue at the moment, without bothering to do any background reading on it, or considering the consequences. Hence, we have a whole generation of self-entitled kids who never had red pen used on their tests, to avoid hurting their self-esteem.

No, the weird part would simply be that we already consider Trekkies* to be strange outsiders. When someone decides to make their children awkward outsiders by choice, and not give the children a choice, people are outraged, even if they’ve done so themselves, because when it’s something that thousands of parents endorse, it’s not weird. It’s “good parenting”.

Hypocrites. Sadly, I can’t find the Klingon for that.

*Listen, Trekkies-who-prefer-to-be-called-Trekkers. You don’t get to choose your nickname. We are indentifying you from a safe distance, so we get to pick the name. Also, pretend I don’t watch Star Trek. It hurts my credibility in mocking Trekkies.