k-tel's k-12 hits

Hi, folks. alpengeist, the lovely and talented web server which had been serving pages diligently, decided to really foul its SCSI connector up. As a result the offending machine has been taken down, tho' I was away when it happened. Now I'm back and we're running on another server temporarily; I hope to have everything cool back up in working order once we switch from SCSI back to ol clicky IDE drives.

If you're looking for Spatula Gardens, my condolences. The park will be available once Alpie comes back online. But for now, enjoy this bizarre writing if you can.

I almost regressed past elementary school this weekend as I was given the third degree by my girlfriend's grad school advisor (don't ask.) Turns out this lady's the mom of a kid I went to elementary school with. Small world we live in, really. For all the socially awkward conversation we had at that point, I'm just glad it didn't devolve into "Oh yes! You were the little boy who cried a lot and ate the paste."

I never have eaten paste, by the way, but I do admire its smell from time to time.

At any rate, lotsa bizarre elementary school memories have flooded my head since, and I found myself, after at almost twenty years of silence, singing the following words:

Joy to the world, the teacher's dead
I shot her in the head
What happened to her body? We flushed it down the potty
And round and round it goes, and round and round it goes
And ro-ound and ro-ound and round it goes.

Gilbert and Sullivan just can't hold a candle to the operatic machinations of a group of potty-mouthed kindergarteners. And, indeed, with the very gusto of a modern major general, I was gaily singing long-forgotten choruses of songs until it hit me. I'm sitting in the car singing about killing my teacher. And hiding the evidence. Alert the media! I could've been a Columbine kid!

Really. I mean, what's the most popular schoolyard song you remember, after the endless permutations of "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, I live in a garbage can"? Most likely it was some folk arrangement of the following classic:

Glory, glory, halleluia
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Hidin' behind the door with a loaded .44
And the teacher ain't teachin no more!

Of course, there are many ways in which we gleefully dispatched our teachers via song. Meeting her on the bank with a US Army tank, or even knocking her off her beam with a rotten tangerine. But it's the loaded gun that's our weapon of choice. Or perhaps it's gasoline, as the following song illustrates:

Deck the halls with gasoline, fa la la la la la la la la
Light a match and watch it gleam, fa la la la la la la la la
See the school burn down to ashes, fa la la la la la la la la
Aren't you glad you played with matches? Fa la la la la la la la la

So what gives? How can hysterical parents claim such outside sources as violent video games or shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer are turning our children into soulless trenchcoat-wearing killers when, obstensibly, it's the very songs they sing at recess that could be putting these nasty ideas into minds that should be closed? When I sang these songs as an impressionable youth, did I really imagine hiding behind a door with a gun, lying in wait for whichever teacher I was feeling animosity towards at the time? Uh, no. At least, I don't remember any gory daydreams of dispatching the teacher in a hail of gunfire and bullets and slow-motion squib explosions. Nor do I remember true visions of fiery carnage and the smell of burning flesh. And while I did play with matches as a youngster, I never burned anything major down, nor did I find a gun and consider a shooting rampage.

Of course, we only sang songs about the death and dismemberment of authority figures. If maybe we had worked a "Let's All Kill The Popular Kids" song into the mix, perhaps things would have been different.

Kids practice what they learn. It doesn't mean they blindly will attempt anything, though. That's insulting. While there was always a naughty thrill to be had over the prospect of singing about forbidden things (playing with matches, killing people, living in a garbage can and swimmin' with bare naked women) one more or less knew better. I knew as a kid matches burned pretty badly, so I didn't play with them. And where was I supposed to find a gun and load it and fire with deadly accuracy?

Perhaps I just had more common sense than the average kid. Or maybe, just maybe, kids have more common sense than the average adult would believe. The work of school shootings is that of some truly clinically mentally unbalanced children. Not the work of your average television-teatfed Pokemon-hoarding consumers-to-be. Even with all the pressures modern society puts on them, they more or less know better. Let's have some faith in the human race for once, acknowledge that accidents (in both physical and conceptual form) do happen, and instead of running around with fingers pointing and harassing, concentrate on bringing peace to the minds of those left hurt, scared, and shattered by such horrific events. Even if it means leaving 'em alone for a while, getting the damn cameras out of their faces, and let them ask themselves "how it felt to be right there" in their own due time.

But what the hell do I know? I'm just a cynical ol' coot with a song in my heart.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured every teacher, we have broken every rule
We're heading down the hall to hang the Principal
The kids are marching on.

Take care, and don't eat anything you shouldn't.