Attention all ignorant, backwards, self-righteous hicks, or IBS-RH, lend me your inbred ears! I am a music teacher in a small town with a school that houses pre-school through 12th grade students. As a music teacher, I have interaction with every grade level and get to know most of the students pretty well. I keep things very “real” with my kids and do everything I can to make them feel welcome and comfortable in my presence. Because of this rapport I have with these kids, I hear a lot of their thoughts on many different subjects. In the recent presidential election period I heard more disturbing falsehoods than you can imagine.
I began to realize how brainwashed these little bumpkins were the day we had a Mock Election here at the school. All of the students got the chance to vote and they were so excited for this opportunity for their parents and teachers opinions to be heard. Patriotic tunes such as Whitney Houston’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner streamed over the speakers as they stood in line with their little orange registration cards at the polls down the hallway from my room.
Always one to get into the mix of things where my students are concerned, I walked out several times to see how things were going and to chat with the kids while they waited their turn. The more I talked with them, the more disturbed I became. “Who are you voting for Miss!?” was the first thing each one wanted to know. Their little faces were so lit up as they anticipated my answer of “McCain of course!!!” and then we would all jump up and down in racist glee. My responses varied from “that’s private” to “I would be happy with either candidate”. The disappointment was obvious as their smiles would fade away for a nanosecond until something or someone else caught their attention.
The kids all seemed pretty passionate about this election and not just because kids are easily excitable. No…they were passionate about it because if we didn’t elect McCain as president, the world would be blown to bits by a terroristic anti-Christ. It didn’t help that this terroristic, anti-Christ was black but even they had the good sense not to say that aloud. I would be passionate too if I were them!
Kids are so sure of themselves too! I never heard one of their preposterous statements introduced with an “I heard that…” or an “I think that…”. It was all 100% facts handed down from God himself. “Obama is going to blow up the world if he’s president”. “Obama is a Muslin”. I assumed they meant Muslim and not a type of cotton fabric.
“Obama put that other guy in prison” was especially shocking to me because I had no idea that it was OBAMA that imprisoned John McCain. All this time the Vietnamese have been taking the blame for something a maniacal little 6 year old boy did! I believe Barack was already living in Indonesia by this time so the shear will that it took for him to travel all the way to Vietnam, put the beatdown on an American soldier, and hold him captive for 5 years took a special kind of evil that I or my students wanted no part of!
The list goes on and on. The final votes were McCain 154,
Obama 45, and Barr 3. I don’t know who these 45 children were who voted for Obama but none of them have ever spoken up to my knowledge, and for good reason. I wouldn’t be surprised to look out my classroom window one day and see a good old-fashion hangin’ from the monkey bars of a child with a sign posted on him saying “Nigre Luvr”.
Here is where I feel I must address the ignorant, backwards, self-righteous hicks of the world. Please stop spreading lies to your children. I know that you loooove making babies and I know that you love for your babies to be little spitting images of you but please…STOP. Stop making babies all together if you can but at the very least stop sharing your opinions on the world with them. Although they were born into your life, God willing they will be able to escape it in about 18 years and find that the world has so much more to offer.
I realize that asking you to stop believing everything you hear with no substantial evidence may be a bit much to ask but could you please not spoon feed the crap to your kids? To your children, you ARE the newspaper, you ARE CNN, and you ARE a trustworthy source of information as scary as this is to the rest of us looking on in complete horror. Anything you tell them is tried and true and once those ideas are planted they are VERY hard to uproot.
I know that I am screaming at the wall here because if social responsibility were a factor in your life, the child in question probably wouldn’t be in existence in the first place but I digress.
Ok so Election Day rolls around and I was so excited to finally have this election behind us and move forward. I honestly felt that either candidate would do a better job than what we have witnessed for the past 8 years so I was happy either way. Yes I preferred one over the other but I honestly was just thrilled to elect someone new into office and stop hearing about the campaign 24/7. I showed up to work on November 5th full of new hope quickly to have it replaced with frustrated despair.
I occasionally have what we at my school call “Rat Patrol”. This is where I show up to school at 7:45 and hold all of the children hostage in a gym for 30 minutes until the bell rings. There are always a few kids who beat me there so I was immediately bombarded with comments and questions about our newly elected President. “Did you hear the news!?” they would say with snarled up noses looking like someone had crapped in their shoes. I like to play dumb a lot of times with the kids I’d just rather not talk to so I replied with “No. Did I hear what?”. “Obama got President”. Once again their faces told me that there was a predicted reaction that I was supposed to give them. “What!? No! Not him!” and we would all roll around the floor vomiting and crying for the loss of our dear planet or something along those lines. When I actually responded with a smile, the looks I received back were deadly. It was as if they just found out their beloved music teacher was also a Muslin, God-hating, terrorist.
The most disturbing thing of all was that most of their misinformation was given to them by a teacher at our school! WHAT!? I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised but this made me sick. A TEACHER of all people, the most trusted source of information for children, was telling them that the new leader of the free world wanted us all dead. It took all of my control not to write an email to the entire staff about this issue. I am not a native to their village so it wouldn’t be wise for me to speak out even if it were for the good of the children. I had to get out my frustration somehow so I typed them out and deleted it which actually made me feel better. That was why I decided to start a blog. I highly doubt any IBS-RH will be reading this and if they do, they will have no idea I’m speaking to them so I don’t actually expect it to make a difference but I sure feel better. Thanks for reading!
