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dafremen
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When they scoop you up early and let you out of home room to go to an "advanced" class. That's when it first hits you:
Why did everything change a bit? Why is everyone in home room looking at you differently? Why are my other "advanced" friends acting differently? Looking down on the others? Banding up with each other?
And then the honor roll kicked in. "Guidance" counselors preached careers and higher education and everything got weird as you either had to choose to be "serious" or be "normal".
Then you chose "serious" and it was like your friends looked at you the way Ben Affleck looked at Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Suddenly you're the person who's doing something, the person that might have some answers. And it feels great. And you're convinced it might be true, like a preacher in a church, their confidence in you, becomes your confidence in yourself..confidence in the surety that you belong in the better seats, the better institutions, the better house, the better life. Those that hated on the way you were changing, were just that: haters. They didn't matter.
But that's if you chose "serious."
Some chose "normal" because "serious" meant giving up some portion of one's mind and freedom of thought to the same influence that had been slowly slithering its way between kids since "advanced classes" and "special ways of standing out". "Serious" meant letting the institution preload us with its notion of how things are, and should be.
That's how some become "better than the uneducated." And with that instilled sense of superiority comes extra pats on the head..extra Scooby snacks. One day better food, money, neighborhoods. And to a child, who like every living thing, needs to be noticed & matter, a child removed from their family 6 hours a day or more, to be surrounded by veritable strangers with an agenda, Scooby snacks are close enough. Sure seems like love sometimes.
But choose "normal" when you're CAPABLE of "serious" and watch those Scooby snack kids fade away. Nary, ye mind. They'll pop up in your life soon enough.
I remember the first time it was demonstrated to me that experience was a better teacher than education in any practical endeavor you could shake a stick at. While testing boards with a new test machine that the engineering department had cobbled together, I decided to modify the test rig and took testing time per board from 3 minutes, to 6 seconds. It took one day's lunch period to make the modifications to the rig. Needless to say, engineering was embarrassed and never treated me the same way again. It struck me that they were the same kids from school..trapped in a job where they weren't allowed to look foolish..their egos and job titles wouldn't let them.
The second time was a LOT more uncomfortable. By then, I was managing a project with 5 - 7 software engineers/programmers involved (while the actual project manager scheduled pointless meetings and demanded endless status reports which he'd skip in favor of "How to Succeed At Anything" type books.) We went on a tour of the production facility. I knew some of these people. I'd worked with them in testing and during R&D. The way the others, the degreed elite of the company, walked past everyone as if they were machines..somehow beneath them, made me cringe. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but I felt the similarity between this and school..advanced classes..honor roll..the engineers who felt slighted by uppity attempts at innovation by the uninitiated.
The entire time, I kept back, talked and smiled with the people I knew. Asked about them and wondered..what the hell had I been trying to achieve? A life surrounded by clueless assholes who played childish politics and ego games all day? Blech.
Then a month or two back, when a friend of mine let loose her comment about homelessness..the contempt she had for the arrangement was palpable. The contempt I felt for her judgement was verbalized. Some have been without not only a home, but without a place to even call home..or family..or friend..for much of their lives. Some are trapped in prisons of PTSD, attachment disorder, schizophrenia. Should they be pitied or sneered at for that?
The Cult of the Scooby Snack farmed us for our abilities, to create a haven for the wealthy made of talent, intellect and ambition while the rest were left to die slow, mechanical deaths, fed by endless want and insufficient means.
We fawned on the lifestyle of "seriousness" and its stated goals long enough to watch those already neglected "normal" children of bygone days fade and wither while we looked away to tend to our masters, be they logo or ego.
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