Sunday, September 14, 2003
(2:29 AM) | Anonymous:
Vigor, Vim, Vitality, And Punch
I have a memory in my head. I have a memory of when I was dead.
Sorry, I was going to start this here..but as I was typing those "ultimate band lyrics" took over my fingers. I'll try again.
I'm curious. I had a memory the other day, as I was toting my backpack around, of a little satan inspired miracle that occured in my life around the 2nd or 4th but certainly not yet the 6th grade. What's this? What's this I speak of? Well, I'm not sure if it was a Carman Ainsworth only, or a Flint only, or a Michigan only, or a nation-wide only plot to ruin everyone's lives, but I'm speaking of the PEP Program.
You see, I was a young 2nd grader (for the duration of the article, we're going with 2nd grade, in case you need me to hold your hand.). My life was perfect. I played Mega Man 2 every day upon getting home, until eventually I'd go play baseball until it got dark. Then I'd come home and wait for mom to get home from work, and then we'd have dinner. And then I'd shower if it was tuesday thursday or saturday. And THEN, THEN I'd go to bed, to restore my juice and do it all again tomorrow.
It was the pleasant life, it was the simple life Gwen Stephani sings about with a straight face while wearing ridiculously pinked off and non-simple hair. It was EVERYTHING LIFE SHOULD BE AND IT WAS STOLEN FROM ME EARLY. Stolen by the god-awful state budgeted program, the PEP program. Dirty liberals.
The PEP program was initiated to help kids do homework. Moreso, it was initiated to help the parents do homework. The State, prompted by years of kids not wanting to do homework, ever, decided that it was the parents fault. And so they prepared them.
Yes, I was sitting in the midst of kindergarten, and it was a glorious time. The teacher, Ms. Kirby, had just said the magic words, "Heads down, thumbs up, time for another round of 7-Up!" when the freaking PA system went off and signaled us down to the gym.
The Gym. Nothing good ever happens in the gym except at gym time. Whether it's scoliosis checks, spaghetti dinners, or eating cancerous ill-gotten meat from the lunch line, if it didn't involve sports, and it was held in the gym, we knew we were in for a rollicking good suckstravaganza.
This particular time we came in and were given the spiel about a fantastic new program. They told us it was cool, fun, and would get us ready for pre-school. THEY LIED. They lied like the lying dogs with brown foxes jumping over them that they were. They carted us all in and tested out these yellow bookbags on us. We, each of us, tried on about 200 of the yellow monstrosities trying to find just the right fit. See, we were as yet uninitiated into the world of strapping heavy burdens onto your back, a world we would enter metaphysically for the rest of our life from that day forth. We were young and fragile, and apparently the crayons and 25 page workbook we were about to carry had every potentiality of snapping our feeble spines in two. I remember some of the kids being really geeked about finally getting to wear backpacks like the elders in the school. I remember them because I marked them in my meta-list of who to kick in the fibula one day.
Jamie Topolinski, I'm coming for you.
(If you do a google search and this comes up, not really. You were just the first name I could remember from Randalls due to its stunning 3 syllables. Okay, first I remembered Mitch Mallard, but I have other antecdotes about him, and what's the fun of picking on just 1 person you didn't really know to well. But yeah, I'm not still upset about that time you beat me in Tetherball in Randalls own minutae "battle of the sexes" with you being Billy Jean King and me being the guy. Except that the agony of it all still burns within my adnoids, on a constant basis, making any and all spittle I cough up taste like sweet, pure, fury. One day, Topolinski, you shall be brought off your mighty tetherball throne.)
Anyways, we all got assigned books and crayons and pencils, which was all in all not unlike an episode of Bill Cosby's "Picture Pages", minus the smiling red permanant marker that made cool humming noises as you drew. And my principal, Bartholomew Zacharich, was there in place of Bill Cosby. Ha ha ha...Bart.
Anyways, the gist of the program was two-fold: To help students learn how to do homework before having to do homework on the real. And..to help parents learn how to help (do) their kids homework (for them) without getting enraged at their sprouts extreme stupidity. It's third and perhaps more understated purpose was to give me something to spew rage at 2 score and 1 year later.
The thing was, it was homework with no purpose. And with no purpose, there is no end in sight. It wasn't like "do this simple math, moron." It was like "Here is some paper - trace your family tree. When you get to where you don't know, ask dad. When you get to where dad is tired of telling you stuff, call Grandma. Her number is 918-342-4020. She is old and loves to talk about people older than her." It was endless stupidity that took hours on end when all I wanted to do was use the cool new tracing thing I had gotten for my birthday to draw racecars.
(This tracing thing probably sounds stupid, but I think it was my most awe-inspiring gift..mostly because I didn't know how to use it. But after about 300 tries I did manage to get one professional looking race car out of it. Professional minus the sucky rainbow colored, all up and outside the line "paint job" I gave it. I've gotta find out what that thing was. It allowed me to do the impossible.)
However, the PEP program met up against the intolerable force that is a young child not wanting to do anything. I think we were like, 3, when the PEP program went into place at my school. Anyways, I eventually broke my dad down. I whined everynight about having to do the homework until eventually he'd just sign the sheet saying I'd done it to not have to work all night to get me to sit still anymore. I employed this same strategy for countless band "practice sheets", homework assignments and parole slips.
So, I guess for all my hatred and unrequited tempestuous hatred (yeah..after all that build up I couldn't really think of anything else.) PEP did finally achieve it's goal and help me learn how to deal with homework for years to come. Thanks to PEP, I learned that if I whine and stomp and refuse to "do the work" for long enough, someone will get frustrated and want to go to bed and give me their blessed, freeing, signature.
OH WAIT NO THEY DON'T. I FAIL AND DON'T GET ANY JOB AND END UP WORKING AT MEATS 'R' YOU UNTIL I DIE OF HEAT EXHAUSTION WHEN I THROW MY HEAD INTO THE VAT OF STEAMING HOT GREASE. Thank you very much PEP PROGRAM, for RUINING MY LIFE.
Dang, I need to employ the weblog as a way of abrogating all my long lost hatreds more often. I am free, I am glorious, I'm every woman.
Now that's PEP.
-Robb
