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!
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