In which Our Hero discovers the limits of Democracy



Solipsistic or not, sometimes I feel as if my age group were the last, great gasp of creation and expression before everything began its final slide into calcification and decline. I wonder if everyone feels this way eventually. Maybe this is what it means to be an adult. Or maybe I'm just a surly bastiche. Take yer pick.

Today's story, boys and girls, involves a similar theme, that of the final gasp of newness, the last whimpering thud as the vast continental plates of society crunched and stuck in place against each other.

Today's story involves choosing Pearsontown's school mascot.
(For those of you who forget quickly, Pearsontown was the Elementary School in which I spent time as a child.)
This may not seem like a lot, but to us it was fairly important. Our school didn't have a mascot. How could this be? What cruelty of fate had left this little elementary school bereft of mascotty goodness? What administrative laziness had forgotten to choose an animal with which to torment the students with goofy wall murals? How could this be?! HOW?!

The choice was simple, a knock-down, drag-out war between the two mascot options, the Panther and the Panda. No holds would be barred. No mercy would be given. For the choice would be turned over to the students, to choose which animal would represent our school for all eternity from this point onwards!

You can see where this one's going, I'm sure. What kid in their right mind would vote for a damn Panda when there was an infinitely cooler alternative available? The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the mighty Panther.

Except, of course, the school administrators had decided that the school would be better off with the more friendly Panda, and threw out the results, replacing them with a vote of the teachers (who obligingly toed the party line and elected the Panda to be the school mascot for ever and ever and ever).

Now, having gone out into the real world and gotten a Real Job(tm), I know that there are many compromises to be made when you're an administrator. It's entirely possible that some outraged parent called up screaming that their child was afraid of cats, or some pansy-ass feel-good neo-hippy insisted that the Panther was, like, such a, like, VIOLENT animal. F'sure. Having seen the kind of corners that you have to cut in Real Life to get by, the kind of deals with the devil that have to be made, I have a hard time really blaming the school administrators about this.

But that doesn't mean I'm not damn surly about it. If you were just going to choose whichever one you thought was better ANYWAY, what the hell was the point of holding a vote? If this ain't a democracy (which school sure ain't), WHY THE HELL tease us with hints that it is?! And people have the nerve, the sheer, utter gall, to wonder why kids are so cynical and mistrustful of authority these days. Gee, I WONDER. Perhaps it's because those authorities continually demonstrate that they have all the intelligence of a dyspeptic lemming. Perhaps it's because not only have we left students with no rights, we have to continually inform them of that fact. There's nothing so destructive to someone's view of authority as to have a taste of freedom, a hint that you actually matter in the world. Individuality, once released, is a very powerful force.

But not the most powerful.

I'd love to say that we took revenge upon the school for sticking us with that accursed Panda, but instead we just sort of surled about it for a few days and then the matter never came up again. Most people forgot.

I didn't. And in this, I suppose, school taught me one thing: any administrative unit which is not accountable to those under it will always, always do whatever the hell it feels like.

Today's Moral: "When a forest is destroyed by the cruel clear-cutting axe and saw, the fact that one tree was higher than the others will not save it from destruction."

Tomorrow: Comic books!

Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or small woodland creatures of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Squeeze the lemon.

THIS SPACE FOR RENT