Market Theocracy

Sigh. This is the kind of crap that makes me feel old. Decrepit. Ancient and cranky:

13 year old suspended for drawing of imaginary gun

Let’s ignore for a moment that the damn picture isn’t even showing the gun (which is quite obviously what the kid says it is — a quick sketch of a laser gun) involved in any sort of violence. Let’s ignore for a minute that the kid was quietly sitting in class bothering no one. Let’s even ignore the fact that
–regardless of anything else — at least the kid was doing something creative.

This kid is being punished for something someone else did years ago that he has absolutely nothing to do with. He is being punished for a freakin’ microscopic level of this-might-possibly-in-a-bizarre- alternate-universe-lead-to-a-possible-maybe-bad-situation.

In other words, it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.

And it makes me feel so old.

I’m 34. 24 years ago I used to sit in math class and start a game. I’d draw something and pass it to the person behind me. They’d add something to the drawing and pass it along in a similar fashion until it went through the hands of every bored kid in class who felt like adding something to the group picture.

Nine times out of ten, these drawings became elaborate fight scenes. Depictions of utterly ridiculous and impossible combat situations. Giant flying armored chickens with death rays on their beaks.
Superman in a dress attacking robots with a spiked mace. Snoopy storming a cliff with a machine gun and a knife clenched between his teeth.

And it wasn’t just the boys. Some of the most insane and violent additions tended to come from the sweetest and quietest and most lady-like of the young women in the class.

And none of them went crazy. None of them shot up the school. None of them, as far as I know (and barring things like drug possession charges) even have a criminal record to this day.

Drawing scenes of violence is something that kids do. It isn’t a sign of repressed rage. It isn’t a warning. It isn’t a precurser to mass murder.

It’s something kids do because they think it’s funny you clueless morons!

And this poor kid didn’t even go that far. All he did was sketch a laser gun. Probably sitting there daydreaming about space battles and alien invasions. About being a hero. About all the silly, grandiose shit you think is cool and exciting when you’re a kid and you’re stuck in a boring classroom fighting sleep.

You weiners are — by taking this zero-tolerance approach to expressions of anything even remotely thematically related to violence — doing two things:

1) You are also cutting out the drive of children to imagine themselves in heroic situations. 

2) You actually are repressing the normal thoughts and feelings and simple, innocent daydreams of these kids who are stuck by your law in a place they don’t want to be. Day after day, year after year.

And you don’t even want them to have the basic escape of imagination?

Shame on you.

Stop repressing our children.

And stop making me feel old.

Dammit.