I believe myself capable of rational thought. It is that irrational and over-emotional conclusion that leads me to write a self-reflective post full of over-blown thinking about thinking like this one.
The little Midwestern town of Rowan, Iowa, the place where I grew up, is probably the center of my soul and biggest reason for why I am who I am.
I was a public school teacher for 31 years. It really seems more like 131 years for all the kids I got to know and lessons I got to teach. I have lots and lots of experience on which to draw for the drawing of conclusions about education. Here is a conclusion I drew (literally);
All kids are good kids.
I can hear the debate from the teachers’ lounge already. “What kind of an idiot thinks something as stupid as that?” “It’s true that there are a lot of good kids, but what about Psycho Melvin or Rebel Maria?” “Some kids are stupid. I have test data to prove it.”
But I not only believe all kids are good, I think all people are good, even the bad ones. I have large numbers of memories filed away of times I got to the bottom of problems with kids acting out in class. Invariably the reasons for their bad behaviors would either make me laugh, or make me cry. Edwin rammed the drinking fountain with his head because he was socially inept and starved for attention from the other kids. El Goofy could make his whole head turn bright purple on command because it made the girls squeal and laugh and he had learned to manipulate facial muscles to make it happen because he liked the result. Lucy yelled at me in front of the whole class because she was thinking about committing suicide like her mother had before her, and she needed me to stop her. (I don’t use these kids’ real names for some very good reasons, but rest assured, Lucy made it to adulthood.) (Sorry, I had to stop at this point and cry for 15 minutes again.) My experiences as a teacher have basically taught me that all people need love, and all people are worthy of love. Someone even loved Adolf Hitler.
There are really two kinds of teachers. There is the kind who teaches because they love kids and will literally sacrifice anything to benefit them. The Sandy Hook incident proved that those teachers exist in every school. There is also the kind who hate kids with a passion and believe themselves to be experts at classroom discipline. Don’t get me wrong, teachers like that mold young people into upstanding citizens or championship-winning football or basketball players on a regular basis. But they do it by polishing out the flaws in kids through punishment and rigorous efforts to remove every flaw because they actually detest the flaws in themselves that they see mirrored in students. I could never be that kind of teacher myself, but I know they are just as necessary as the other kind. After all, all people are good people, even the bad ones.
Doctor Doom really doesn’t like to be around me. Still, he’s a good person too, even though he’s fictional.
After more than 500 words worth of this nonsense, and I realize I still have a lot more to say about this goofy topic, I must draw to a close. And I know I haven’t convinced anyone of anything yet. But let me threaten you with the prospect that I will pursue this topic again sooner than you would like. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about why I think what I think, and why I am always thinking.
Catch a Falling Star 
From an Alternative Point of View
Am I literally able to fortell the future? Of course not. But as an overly-sensitive artistical type one could argue that there is evidence in my art and writings that my reality now was at least partially embedded in my consciousness many years ago.
And truthfully, looking at the truth of things based on empirical evidence is what this point-of-view post is all about. We cannot always rely on the traditional concepts of good and evil as they have been taught to us. Sometimes you have to look at how the evidence stacks up properly, and just plain intuit a new way of seeing the whole picture. Yes, this is a portrait of a fifteen-year-old former student of mine. And she was definitely evil and difficult to deal with. But she went into nursing after high school. She works in the ER where her decisive ways and ferocious insistence on having things work out in her favor because that’s the way the established rules say it must be done turn into positive qualities that are probably saving lives in a Texas hospital as we speak. It is all in how you perceive the truth of a situation and then apply it.
Comedy, of course, depends greatly on rearranging your point of view. If you are going to make a joke about something, you have to re-mix and un-match the details in ways that still make a sort of sense to the reader or the hearer of the joke. I have taught at schools like Dudwhittler’s. If you are a teacher, you recognize that that school bus carries not only that which is funny, but also that which is very true. The teacher driving the bus is a tin man who easily rusts and cries too much, thus rusting further, but you can see he has earned his heart, even if he has to drive the bus on top of teaching so he will have enough money to buy food.
But probably the most anticipated thing from a new perspective that you were expecting since reading the title is a new perspective on the Coronavirus shut-down and economic depression. That alternative take is simply this… the pandemic, though extremely hard and painful, is a good thing that happened at the right time.
I am willing to say this, even though the way the virus has been mishandled in this country is going to very likely be the death of me, because there are benefits that we simply don’t recognize without a thorough punch to the gut and another to loose teeth.
It is a good thing because it will make it harder for Herr Fuhrer Pumpkinhead to win the next election, and he will probably take a number of corrupt Republicans down to the bottom of the sea with him.
It is a good thing because it is proving to us that we can survive on less and still make our way out of the bad situation.
It is a good thing because kids get extra time off from school, and probably also the chance to spend more time with the people who really teach them things we need them to know… like parents, grandparents on Zoom, teachers who don’t fear distance-learning technology, and trolls on the internet (Yes, I know that last one is risky and mainly learning the hard way, but it is also true from before the virus hit).
It is a good thing because the air is cleaner. And we have proven that we can make radical adjustments when it is a matter of life and death. And the environmental crisis is actually a matter of life and death.
So, now I’ve had my twisted say about my pretzel-minded perspective. And so you can now trash it, or possibly learn to like pretzels.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, humor, Paffooney, satire