I think that pun is good.
Today children were yelled at by someone who was exceptional at it. For the past few weeks I've had a shift at a particular elementary school where I have to start my shift at 10:00 AM, meaning I start my day smack dab in the middle of lunchtime. This isn't really a problem, most of the kids are nice enough, and while loud, it's not so loud that it blocks anyone's thoughts or makes it hard to hear someone talking directly in front of you. However, the other attendants seem to think that it's that loud, and will take every opportunity to get a foot away from your face to yell something that belongs on a coffee mug you'd see on the desk of a person you hate.
Most of the time, it's just one elderly dutch woman with a slight Jersey accent telling kids to be quiet and if they don't shut up before the recess bell sounds she'll force them to stay in until they turn to dust. Usually this either works or is completely ignored and the kids are released anyway because apparently they're so unbearably, vulgarly loud that she cannot even stand to hear them talking at a normal speaking voice over there in the corner. It's irritating, since I've actually developed a decent rapport with some of the kids, and they always calm down when I ask them nicely.
Today, however, they brought in one of their resident experts at treating children as if they were unruly barbarians. This gentleman, wearing khaki slacks, a white dress shirt, and a black Halloween tie bearing the image of a zombie emerging from the ground in front of a grave which is labeled merely "Bad to the Bone", starts tearing a path of psychological destruction the likes of which I have not seen since my experience in elementary school. If a child, in his or her infinite uneasiness, fidgets in line, he or she is called by label, not name, and is then commanded to sit at the table of lost souls. If a child, in his unnatural tendancy for revolution, tries to talk to his or her friends in line or at a table, he or she is bellowed upon, and sent to the previously mentioned prison table. The other lunchroom matrons were enthralled by his draconic spirit and soon began murmuring amongst themselves about how damn great this asshole was, and how he can come back anytime he wants to. I voice my distaste for this turn of events multiple times. In a turn of events that honestly shocked me, I am totally ignored. Not just "Oh don't worry about it" style ignored, but full-on didn't fucking hear me ignored. I decided to hold a personal strike and refused to clean anything during that excruciating fifteen minutes.
To take a sidebar; the lunch period at this, and every other elementary school I've worked at, is fifteen minutes. That seems insane to me, if I could eat something in fifteen minutes I certainly wouldn't want to go outside and run around like an idiot for twenty after that. That brings up another amusing problem, the recess afterwards is longer than the lunch period. I don't get it, for the most part all this does is promote gastro-intestinal problems and waste. Whatever.
Why do these harsh, "tough love" style methods of child control permeate time? How many generations of hate-filled, revenge driven misanthropes do we have to create until people figure the fuck out that the reason you're so pissed off is because the adults in your life treated you the way that you're treating the kids you're in charge of? For God's sake, 90% of the willpower expended in my childhood was to undo the damage that people like that did. All that I could think about when someone treated me like an animal that couldn't be tolerated was how I can get back at these opressors. Granted, I was in elementary school, and in the grand scheme of things, the stuff that I lost wasn't that big a deal, a recess there, an infraction for calling a kid a bastard (the son of a bitch body checked me out of a jump shot he should BURN IN HELL), but what it taught me was that these people in charge of me do not care to help, all they will pay attention to is how they can bring me down to a level that they have deemed managable.
I know there's more to this in my head, but I can't seem to go any further so this might end up being a two parter! TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR MORE OF ME BITCHING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATED BEING A KID.
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1 comment:
Stoplight! Seriously though, I don't know why kids have to be quiet. We already discussed this at Sharis'.
Oh! And in regards to this, and I know that you don't care too hard for my grandma, but at Drew Central, we weren't allowed to talk at all either. I told my grandma when I got home one day about it, and she marched up to the school and bitched them out. Nothing was done about it, but they were terrified of her. I think they're allowed to talk to now though, but it is regulated. Mind you, this was the same school that didn't grant access of the salad bar to the elementary school students. It was only for teachers. No! Don't let kids make the healthy choice! Let them eat cardboard sandwiches and hyper-processed mac n' cheese!
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