This is all a fairy tale. It takes place in Pennsylvania; various settings, a make-believe school, center stage. This whole state may be a fairy tale, who knows? Our fairy tale is in the nature of a nightmare. In our nightmare, our son nearly died. Twice. Again, please remember, for all intents and purposes this is a fictitious blog. In our fictitious nightmare, we could still lose him. In our bit of undigested -potato- dream, tax dollars were weapons. Yours, ours, state, Federal. Probably because it was all a fantastic dream, no one seemed concerned.
" See Something, Say Something " , 4 default watchwords, sopping consciences belonging to men whose can't see the dam, much less bother holding thumbs to those holes. We saw a lot. In our dream slash fairy tale, we said an awful lot, to an awful lot of people. Transpires those words are kinda just bumper stickers, you know? How many, many parents said words, their own ' somethings ', as we did, across time, across this country? The current tragedies are inevitable results, gargantuan, granite chunks blown from a structure neglected, eroded and poorly regarded as anything but a bottomless coffer, collecting tax dollars. That'd be great, if those budgets went to teachers and kids. They don't. Getting there, in this make-believe tale. Hang on, please. Shells populated by our most precious assets, our schools. Kids are pretty handy. Without them, it'd look a little silly, all the tax money funneled their way.
As I said, getting there. Part of a chapter includes Pennsylvania's enduring, unendearing budget woes. OH the gnashing of capped teeth, we're all so poor! Meanwhile a tiny, little school district carries a million ( that's a million ) dollars in something called a 'floating budget'. In our Fairy Tale, this fiction-filled story, the main, made-up, invented, entirely fictitious characters use a nice chunk of that for attorney fees.
Which makes it handy ( and hang on, I'm getting there, to the Fairy Tale ), our compulsory attendance laws. That's an awful lot of kids, compelled to get into little yellow tubes ( no compulsory seat belts, just get 'em there ), compelled to go sit around our compulsory shells called schools. The more students you compel, the more tax dollars you get, too. Handy kind of law. The ' or else ' is interesting. They've been arresting kids and parents since 1840 or so. In those days, the claim was, all we peasants were compelled to clean ourselves up. ' Or else '. It made rich people look bad.
So when it all falls apart in such an obvious way, and parents notice children who will never some home again, en mass, teachers who did their jobs despite paltry paychecks disappear in a our American, time honored hail of bullets; when it all falls apart that way, we still look no further than the usual collapse of society, usual lack of concern over safety, usual clash over those idiotic weapons. It's all so gosh-darn usual around here. Anyone ask how in blazes we got here?
Taxes, lawyers, compulsory education, mass tragedies, conscienceless men, black box warning ( may be some females in there somewhere, our novelette consists almost exclusively of the male of the species, don't ask me why ), where is the connection, please? To use the onion simile is unfair to onions. It is a horrifying fairy tale explanatory of far too much, a three year forced march as veritable ( fictional ) prisoners to a system so far outside anyone's understanding of what this society, or any, single parent signed up for, it's our belief, in our fictional family, schools, like certain toxic chemicals, be required to carry Black Box Warnings.
Next post, " How We Just Paid $ 25.000 To Attend A Public School; Or, Cashing In Your Retirement, A Pennsylvania Student's Parent's Manuel; Or, How To Successfully Complain About Your School Forcing You To Fork Over $25.000, No, We Really Would Like To Know
