FEAR...

Lets talk about fear, not tangible fear... like bees (fuck that), *we don't need to be scared of bees. but the fear that is spreading through America slowly but surely. This is the kind of fear that has people treat every day situations like they are life threatening.

This post comes to you courtesy of my ride into work this morning. I turned on to Fisher St. as I do every day, Today by luck of traffic I was a few minutes earlier than usual (crap). Fisher is about 2 miles long and usually a painless drive, HOWEVER, today instead of it taking me about 4 minutes to get from one end to the other it took me 15. Do you want to know why? Of course you do, I ended up behind a school bus, which normally would annoy me... Today it pissed me off. This bus in the span of half a mile stopped 14 times. 14!! Are you kidding me?! Basically I could see 4 stops in advance around the buss, the freaking thing stopped at every other house to pick up 1 or 2 kids. I was losing my shit by the 6^th stop. And this went on for 8 more stops before the bus finally turned onto another street (Thank Christ).

It got me thinking, and since I had plenty of time to think with that yellow monstrosity creeping along in front of me I hammered out some good thoughts. First I thought of all the things I would do with 106 million dollars... They had just announced the Power Ball and well, come on you think about it too. Anyway, back to the topic at hand; I thought of my childhood, I would walk from my house to the center of town (¼ mile maybe) where about a dozen kids would pick up the bus. At some point the bus stop was moved to right in front of my house, what a great day that was! But still, the other kids had to walk to it. And this was me at maybe 9 or 10 years old, yeah I am sure most parents watched their kids and whatnot, but even still today on the drive almost all of the kids were sitting in their parents cars waiting for the bus anyway. So what's the difference? What has us so scared that we can;t let our kids walk 4 houses over and catch the bus? If the thing stopped 5 times in that stretch I would have been fine, It would have been unnecessary but I would have been fine. But the bus stopped at nearly every other house for only half a mile. Is it kids getting abducted? Is it the “helicopter” parents who are scared that their children will be left out of the fun? In all honesty bus stops are a blast. We use to play wiffel ball in my yard waiting for the bus, and then if there was time, we would hit each other with the bat... Ahh the good days.

America seems scared of it's own shadow these days, we constantly make up reasons for our bad behaviors. We are trying to justify them as if it matters... It doesn't. “Listen, person who isn't me, it's ok to be scared of bees, you don’t need to say that you ran away screaming as a 'joke' because it's totally funny to do that.” Just be honest. I swear that person isn't me.

My wife is a teacher, she teaches 3^rd grade, and let me tell you, her kids are dumb. Not all of them, but if you had a hand full of rocks and you threw them at her students (don't do this) the kids the rocks hit are dumb. Let me also clarify this, all kids are dumb.. . It's not a bad thing, it's just a fact. They haven't had the life experiences that you and I have had. Guess what, you were dumb too once (maybe still), but for some reason, parents today are not letting their kids fail and then learn from their mistakes. Instead parents are making excuses for their kids which is totally enabling them to be dumb forever. I'm going to give you an example of something that recently was done in her class... I might change a detail or two just to ensure anonymity.

Jenn hands out a Test which the kids have known about for weeks and have been studying/practicing IN CLASS with her the whole time. This test was based on a story they read in class. One kid gets several questions wrong and as a result needs to have the test signed by a parent and returned the next day, you all remember these...

So here is the question that the student got wrong, and then her note afterward...

1. What might Dogzilla realistically do?
   A) Chase cars        B) Chew a furniture store
   C) Fly                    D) Prepare taxes

The student chose B... which is wrong.

“Billy didn't understand this question because we have cats not dogs, so he wouldn't know that dogs chase cars”

Two things lady, 1) they read the story in class, which meant that he was at least EXPOSED to dogs. 2) You are a stupid bitch.

Don't make excuses for your kid! Let him learn, tell him what he did wrong and maybe get the kid a dog you ignorant twit. Cats suck. Period.

So this is the end of this particular rant. Don’t be so scared America, like FDR said “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” And Bees... Seriously, they are winged demons. 

 * Yes we do.