Marketing Begins At Home

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost our collective senses of perspective, if not our minds.

Here in the Bedford Central School District (motto “Please, We’ll Put Your Kid In The Gifted Program If You Promise Not To Sue Us”) the high school has been evacuated twice in the past few months owing to various “threats”.

More likely these threats, which turned out to be graffiti on the bathroom walls threatening to blow up the school, were designed to help the perps avoid a test. And of course the perps got what they wanted, plus the added bonus of attention and the gratitude and admiration of their peers.

That gratitude might be short lived owing to a new policy subjecting every child going in or out of Fox Lane Middle and High School is subject to random searchs of their bags, their lockers and their persons. Way to go, teaching children to respect authority and all. Treat them like criminals because of a joke.

When I was in High School we were treated like responsible adults until we stepped out of line. And we made jokes about blowing up the school and watched movies like Rock and Roll High School and somehow ended up alright. Because, news flash, the job of the American Teenager is to flip the bird at authority. Believe it or not, the drinking age was 18 and sometimes during my senior year, I even had a beer, legally. And I survived.

Now we’re treating eight year olds like criminals for sniffing markers.

Where did we lose our minds?