Monday, November 15, 2004

Avast!
This is a true story. All of it. I am totally not joking.

---

I had a nice conversation with Education today. Naturally, I spend most of my days with him, him doing his best to help me with succeeding in life -- by cramming any random knowledge he can down my throat in hopes that I will turn out only to be a teacher, a scientist, a mathematician, or a historian. "Anything else", he says, "and you're on your own."

But anyway, that's not what we talked about today. Today was the day for him to make some confessions to me. He needed to let it all out.

"John, I've been -- I've been doing some terrible things to other kids, you know."

"How so?" I knew whatever he had to say would've happened sooner or later, but I was still quite taken aback. You can't just live a daily life wondering if such-and-such dam will burst today or tomorrow or next week. Sometimes it's simplest to let things take you off guard.

"I've been ... losing my focus. I don't think I'm even trying to help kids anymore. I spend so much time nowadays trying to reach out to and appeal to kids like you that I'm not giving them any footing to go places and have careers. And what's worst is, they have to learn what I want -- no, what I think they want to learn. Sure, they get the option to choose their classes as they see fit, but I only have the resources to provide them with so many classes; and every class that isn't focused on hearing what I have to say is a class that could've been used to give someone inspiration for a career."

"And are we talking about anything in particular?"

Education sighed. He opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. Finally, he drew close and whispered in my ear, "Well, at some universities, I've been teaching ... Lil' Kim classes."

My heart froze. Was this a joke? How could you even teach a class on Lil' Kim, even if you thought it was beneficial to the students? What is there to learn? That is what it's about, isn't it?

"Oh, hell no." I said, and briskly started to walk off. This was some crap I wasn't going to deal with.

"No, wait, John! You don't understand! This is what the kids can relate to! They like me for it!"

I turned around in a huff.

"They don't like you for it because it's not you! You're bullshitting society into thinking that you're something you're not! You're not about nine-month trends and industry whoring. You're about making humanity a place where intelligence not only exists, but progresses. And from the looks of it, you're sure as hell not doing your job."

"Hey, it was one incident, ok? It happened one time at one school."

"So you mean that's the only time you've pulled something like this? You want me to believe that?"

He started to say something, but I cut him off, and pointed a firm finger at him.

"You've got four years to get your shit together. Four years, and then I'm going to hit college. You'd better have your act straightened out."
Comments (2)