I Have Seen the Apocalypse and His Name is Jamie

Did you ever have one of those days, you know, where you’re ridding the bus and you come across the embodiment of everything that’s wrong in the world? No?

Well, friend, sit down and listen…

His name is Jamie. And, I know his name is Jamie, because his mom kept yelling it out every minute or so. This was on the bus stop, in the rain, and in the cold.

Jamie was doing his own thing, however. He was running around in a tight circle singing the “Gimme a Break, Kit Kat” song over and over and over again. His head was tilted skywards as if to be chanting to the clouds. Turkeys when they do that usually drown from the rain; oh, but not Jamie… he’s gifted. And this literally went non-stop for ten or so minutes.

When the bus came, I had the fortune to sit next to the youngster and his monst… err, mother. It was there that I heard the rumblings of the End of the World. No it wasn’t the prior singing in the rain… oh no. That wouldn’t have left a mental scar as what would then occur. Jamie’s mother and the mother of another kid were engaged in conversation over:

Are you ready? Are you sure?

They were outraged that their sons were not allowed to use spellchecker on an exam.

I shall type that again… Their sons (3rd graders) were not allowed to use spellchecker (a program to correct grammar and spelling should the pre-educated writer make a slipup) on an exam (a test to see how well a kid is doing sans technology).

How, in the course of human history, did we come to this point?! What ever happened to learning how to spell, or use the correct syntax of English? I can possibly see the kid complaining, for that is what kids do. But the mother?!

Lord god in high heaven strike me down if parents are going to get bitchy because their children are forced to become literate members of society and not blobs in the gutter unable to tell if they have the right amount to get the themselves loaded while collecting welfare!!

Spellchecker is for grownups who supposedly have an idea of what they’re doing; it’s not for little boys to get promoted to 4th grade just so they can be fast tracked by a rotting educational standard into oblivion.

So let’s see now, we’ve got War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death… and in a few years – Idiocy, or Jamie to his friends.