"And I'm Callin' Time And Temperature Just For Some Company"

In Chuck's growing List of Idiots, we've got a new entry. The story comes courtesy of my mom, and just proves how bloody moronic and naive high school students are. Well, some high school students, anyway. I don't recall being this dense when I was in high school, but that might just be a trick of memory.

Anyway, so these kids are sitting in a freshman English class, drinking something out of a Sonic cup. The "something" turns out to be rum and coke. When the students go to the classroom door to confer with a buddy of theirs who happened to drop by, the teacher (not my mother, I should note) noticed something was up. She calls out to the kids, they bolt. She chases them down, catches them, and drags them to the principal's office.

So these kids are sitting in the principal's office, and one of them keeps maintaining that he only had "one drink." In the middle of making this protest, his eyes sorta bug out, he makes a run for the garbage can, and he doesn't make it. Puddle o' vomit. Yeah, the kid may've only had one drink, but only if by one drink you mean "one cupful of the drink." Baka.

Mom and I are rolling because of this whole incident, but it also bothers me on a basic level. Maybe I just wasn't privy to it when I was in high school, but I'm pretty sure most of the students who were there when I attended high school knew better than to drink in the classroom. I mean, outside of the classroom, I make no mistakes that at least a couple of them had to be doing something stupid and illegal, but while actually sitting in class? What made these children think they could get away with that? Or that it was okay? Do kids today just have no sense of right and wrong? Or do they just think that perhaps the rules don't apply to them? Maybe it's a thrill thing--"heh, lookit me, I'm drinkin' in the classroom, hur hur hur." Where'd they even get ahold of rum, anyway? Mom and Dad apparently need to learn how to lock the ol' liquor cabinet.

I mean, I really drank until I got into college. Oh, I'd had a sip of dad's beer once or twice, and maybe a bit of champagne on New Year's, but I'd never really had a drink. And even when I was an undergraduate, I only got tipsy once, and that was under my parents' roof while they were home (admittedly, they were on the other side of the house and sound asleep, but they knew Wendy and I were drinking), and I had the good sense not to do anything stupid. I wasn't drinking during the course of the school day, and I sure as hell wasn't drinking during class. Do they just make kids stupider than they did when I was younger? My friend Ev maintains that the generation following me--the Millennials, I believe he calls them--are apathetic like the flannel-clad Gen-Xers, but cast adrift like the Baby Boomers, and ultimately don't give a damn about anything except the moment. While that's nice and Buddhist of them, living in the moment and all, they seem to forget about anything that doesn't directly apply to them. Ev says they have no understanding of vertical chronology--that is, the distant past is just as foreign to them as three years ago, and the future is just as foreign as that. Not only is the past a foreign country to these kids, but they can't even conceive of wanting to visit it or that anything really exists in that country. It's all rather depressing for a history major, someone trained to think vertically. All these kids are aware of is horizontal chronology--what is happening here and now, perhaps across a broad territory, but probably not. The fact is, they don't care unless it's directly related to them, and they probably still don't care very much then. It's bloody depressing, really.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Old '97s, "Big Brown Eyes"