When it comes to our state's children, we boys and girls were sold like so much hoary campaign rhetoric and innocently boxed into untenable strictures of what the electorate thought life should be-- as if we had no free will to wander outside of the chalk-lines of hop-scotch and the cheerful obliviousness of "Leave it to Beaver". In the same way that the inner workings of Washington is leery of letting the general electorate "know too much", it seemed as if the average Missouri voter was afraid of ambiguity and confusion in "lesser minds" as he waddled around with a frowning expression and a brain-stem about the size of a Stegasaurus's. That is, if he even believed in evolution and tried to get it yanked from the science curriculum as young minds festered with modern, unbiblical notions.

In elementary school sex-ed class, the first thing it said in the text book was that marriage was the best way to go, probably to please competing factions without using overly-religious overtones, and left it at that. It started up a lively debate among the 5th graders at this saucy, exciting subject cooking in the room-- whether they should listen to some oblivious, uptight text-book written by heavy-handed adults or find out for themselves and the purpose of the message was defeated.

Said heavy-handedness could never adequately explain "why" something was important except to decry "its immorality", which doesn't register unless you can show direct consequences of where behavior leads and what happens to a society when there's too much of it. But leave it up to the adults to pound the Bible and then panic when they find out that lots of people don't use the Bible as their moral authority. Then their strategy is to "cut off debate" and get into the politics of raw force. And this can become particularly embarrassing in a court of law when all one has to do is drive logic's lance into their weak spot and make them look like fools in front of everyone. . . . . just like in "The Scopes Monkey Trial".

That's why it's better not to teach absolutes because they inevitably fail in this world of worlds. . . . .

Back in the late '80s and early '90s we kids were the target of the most extensive "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign in history. T-shirts, leaflets, stickers, the D.A.R.E program, you name it. It was constant and unremitting. Anti-tobacco rhetoric was thrown in for good measure and they practically whipped the kids into hysteria with motivational speakers trotted out in front of all-school assemblies to give their high-octane presentations of why you should always resist peer pressure. At the end, they asked the gym how many kids were going to take up smoking. Looking around, under the onus of each other, no one raised their hand. . . . .

There were pictures of diseased lungs in the nurse's office, or the story of someone who smoked so much they burned away the septum in their nose and had one big nostril instead of two. There was the frequently-cited statistic that every time you smoked a cigarette that you took five minutes off your life.

The counselor came in once a week, usually with the purpose of handing out more anti-drug and anti-tobacco material. One thing I remembered was a little holographic plate that featured a cheap cartoon of "The Tin Man" from "The Wizard of Oz" holding out his heart and saying that quitting smoking reduces the chances of heart disease. This, from "The American Heart Association".

It was carrot & stick, pure and simple.

Inevitably, this circled back to smoking as the kids gabbed about how they would tell them the dangers but never take it up themselves. Not to be underdone, always having a flair for the dramatic, I made up a story about going downstairs in the middle of the night and throwing my Mom's cigarettes in the dumpster in an effort to save her life.

The counselor didn't exactly encourage me further, but neither could she retreat from the simple world she had painted for us.

(And incidentally, she probably had a hankering for a cigarette!)

I know this, because one time she dropped her purse and cigarettes came spilling out. The teacher's lounge was always filled with smoke and they warded us off like the preacher caught in a porno booth. Hypocrisy is certainly better than "no standards whatsoever", but they could have at least treated us as if we had the capacity to realize the difference. . . . .

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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'

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(Rheeee of Crickets)

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("I heard that, Missy!")