So, I had a lot of time on my hands to screw around on social media last week, and this story kept coming up about a kid at a Thanksgiving Pageant and how the teacher took the microphone away from him and he didn't get to participate, and everyone was losing their motherloving minds over it and it was viral and shit.
But in learning some facts about this incident, it's not that the kid (who is high-functioning autistic) didn't get to be in the play. His line or part or whatever came earlier in the play, and he wanted to add on something at the end. And my guess is that the teacher and the kid had been locked in a power struggle over it, or how the hell else would she have had the cat-like reflexes to know when to grab the mic?
But the point of this is that people are just en masse outraged over a teacher trying to exert a little control over her student. Yes, she probably should have just let the kid have his way - after all, what would it hurt? He just wants to be treated like everyone else. Except, wait, everyone else didn't get a stab at a few extra words, did they?
Clearly, I'm kind of an asshole.
But the thing is this. I shouldn't be spending any time worrying about a kid in West Virginia who got his feelings hurt by a teacher, who frankly, was probably at the end of her damn rope, and doesn't get paid enough, either.
If I wanted to worry about school kids, how about seventy kids from an elementary school two blocks from my house? These are kids who participate in a backpack program. That means that on weekends and holidays, before they leave school, they get a backpack filled with easy to prep food that will ensure that they DON'T GO HUNGRY.
Think about that. As fat as I am! As much food as my husband and I waste, there are kids in my community that have to worry about getting enough to eat. We have a large homeless community in Nashville. I've met them at the mission, I've bought newspapers from them on the side of the road. There are people near you who are lonely, anxious, afraid. They live next door and pass you in the aisle at the drug store.
If you want to whip up some sympathy, start there.
And yeah, it sucks that this kid got denied his mic time, but that's between him, his parents and the school. Everyone else needs to get some damn business and mind it.
And for fuck's sake, put down your phone video cameras. Not every Thanksgiving Pageant is going to producer the Zapruder films.
ae
But in learning some facts about this incident, it's not that the kid (who is high-functioning autistic) didn't get to be in the play. His line or part or whatever came earlier in the play, and he wanted to add on something at the end. And my guess is that the teacher and the kid had been locked in a power struggle over it, or how the hell else would she have had the cat-like reflexes to know when to grab the mic?
But the point of this is that people are just en masse outraged over a teacher trying to exert a little control over her student. Yes, she probably should have just let the kid have his way - after all, what would it hurt? He just wants to be treated like everyone else. Except, wait, everyone else didn't get a stab at a few extra words, did they?
Clearly, I'm kind of an asshole.
But the thing is this. I shouldn't be spending any time worrying about a kid in West Virginia who got his feelings hurt by a teacher, who frankly, was probably at the end of her damn rope, and doesn't get paid enough, either.
If I wanted to worry about school kids, how about seventy kids from an elementary school two blocks from my house? These are kids who participate in a backpack program. That means that on weekends and holidays, before they leave school, they get a backpack filled with easy to prep food that will ensure that they DON'T GO HUNGRY.
Think about that. As fat as I am! As much food as my husband and I waste, there are kids in my community that have to worry about getting enough to eat. We have a large homeless community in Nashville. I've met them at the mission, I've bought newspapers from them on the side of the road. There are people near you who are lonely, anxious, afraid. They live next door and pass you in the aisle at the drug store.
If you want to whip up some sympathy, start there.
And yeah, it sucks that this kid got denied his mic time, but that's between him, his parents and the school. Everyone else needs to get some damn business and mind it.
And for fuck's sake, put down your phone video cameras. Not every Thanksgiving Pageant is going to producer the Zapruder films.
ae
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