Let rug rats be rug rats

As kids and households no doubt know, the three words that terrorized my heart as a kid are upon us: “Back to school.”

I was blissfully oblivious to this situation until I whipped into National Office supply on Monday. The parking lot has always been cramped, but this time is was downright overflowing. I figure with the money they spent on that massive sign that fronts Beach Road they could have built an eight story parking garage, but it’s none of my business.

Inside the store: Kids! Lost of them. Rug rats, snot pumps, carpet crawlers. These energetic little folks were having a field day brandishing their brand new Snoopy notebooks and Pokeman pencils. Indeed, I envy anyone who can muster any degree of enthusiasm for buying office supplies. Ah, youth.

Meanwhile, our neighbors to the south in Guam are engaged in a hot debate over the merits of requiring public school students to wear uniforms. The theory is that putting on a uniform will make the stupid smart, the dishonest honest, and the undisciplined disciplined. In Guam, they’re so desperate for easy answers that they’ve mistaken uniformity for discipline.

Unlike many of the proponents of mandatory government uniforms, I actually went to school in uniform. College, more precisely, where I was a Navy ROTC student. Uniforms are highly impractical for the college man. They don’t absorb beer well. Lipstick on the collar is hard to conceal. When you forget to put on your socks, you’re conspicuous. Ditto with your trousers.

Of course, I volunteered for the gig, so I couldn’t complain about it. And many religious schools, voluntary propositions also, require wearing a uniform, and I don’t see how anyone can complain about that either.

But when the government mandates it for its citizenry, you have to chuckle. Does society crave authority so much that the mere thought of a kid wearing jeans and an Iron Maiden tee shirt inspires calls for legislation?

Evidently. I suspect some adults, the ones who weren’t steaming up the car windows on Friday nights, harbor some jealousy towards youthful free spirits. You’ve got to be pretty low to squander any of your scant mortality crusading to be a kill joy for the younger set–or for any set, for that matter. It betrays a yawning lack of fulfillment deep in the ol’ psyche.

And the best is when some fat slob who never spent a day of his meaningless life in the military starts to preach about the virtues of mandatory school uniforms. Hey, if you crave uniformed institutional discipline, then earn your opinion the hard way and enlist.
Consider the father who never made the high school baseball team being the loudest voice at his son’s little league game. People who weren’t good enough to walk the walk sure love to talk the talk–and loudly bully the younger ones, as if sheer volume will somehow bury the shameful truth beneath.

Those rambunctious kids at National Office supply seemed perfectly happy in their normal clothes. I guess we could have wrapped them up in dress blues, marched around the parking lot a few times, opened ranks, and done some pushups…but that would seem to take the kid-ness out of being a kid. And most kids know what many adults don’t: It’s what’s on the inside, not on the outside, that counts.