Snitching is Mandatory

The powers who be in Nagel Middle School gave my step-daughter a detention last week.

For some unknown reason, another girl in her homeroom gave her [the other girl] boyfriend a knife for his birthday. Being a swift thinker, she decided to give it to him at school. Before classes started so he'd have extra time to be stupid.

Showing he was her intellectual equal, he began flashing the knife to everyone he met, including my step-daughter. Not one of the kids described Birthday Boy as aggressive or threatening--he was just mighty proud of his knife.

It looks like he and his girl are on the road to home-schooling. My step-daughter was hauled off to the office for not immediately turning him in. Back in my day, when we rode to school courtesy of Fred's two feet, most guys carried some sort of pocket knife to school. Before the era of plastic pop bottles, soft drinks were sold in glass containers which required a bottle opener--you may have seen one of these in a museum. Everybody carried a knife with a built-in opener. It's a wonder we weren't all killed on a daily basis. With schools' zero-tolerance policies today, I'd imagine a glass bottle could be viewed as a potential weapon.

Back in my day, we had to use our imagination a little to see all school employees as morons. Now adults feel obliged to prove it to them.