Sometimes a story shows up in the media that sends me into a fury\u2014your basic throw-your-shoe-at-the-TV-set fury. \u00a0So I didn\u2019t write about it immediately. \u00a0Instead, I put myself into a blogger\u2019s time-out. \u00a0\u201cGive it some time,\u201d I told myself. \u00a0\u201cSee if your still mad about it then.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I gave myself a couple of weeks to think about it. \u00a0Besides, for those couple of weeks I had other things to write about\u2014a new book coming out in paperback (Remains of Innocence has been on the NYTimes<\/em> top ten list for THREE\u00a0weeks now, thank you.) as well as chasing after a new puppy. \u00a0(JoJo is currently curled up asleep in Bella\u2019s bed with Bella.) \u00a0So this morning, seeing as how it\u2019s Wednesday, I checked my potential blog index and guess what. \u00a0I\u2019m still mad. \u00a0So here goes.<\/p>\n From what was reported, I understand that a woman, somewhere in the wilds of Colorado, was packing her daughter\u2019s lunch a couple of weeks back. \u00a0She\u2019s a mom. \u00a0She probably has a job. \u00a0Maybe a couple of pets to worry about. \u00a0Maybe\u2014probably\u2014her life is complicated, and grocery shopping is one of those things that has to be scheduled. \u00a0So that morning, while packing a lunch, the mother looked in her fridge only to find that the vegetable bin was bare. \u00a0(Ever had celery sticks go bad or have a package of those cute little sweet carrots turn slimy and sour? \u00a0Believe me, I know how that can happen!)<\/p>\n So this particular mom shut the fridge door and looked in her cupboard which, it turns out, was NOT bare. \u00a0On one of the shelves she found a container of \u00a0individually wrapped packets of Oreo Cookies. \u00a0Perfect!!! \u00a0So that\u2019s what she put in her daughter\u2019s lunch along with her sandwich\u2014a packet containing not one but two whole Oreo Cookies. \u00a0(Back when I was packing school lunches\u2014on those days when I couldn\u2019t scrape together enough change out of the bottom of my purse for my kids to buy their lunch\u2014I would have LOVED to have had packets of Oreo Cookies available during those hectic let\u2019s-get-everybody-to-school-and-work moments in the middle of my kitchen!)<\/p>\n So the girl took the lunch her mom had packed, and off she went to school. \u00a0At lunch, a member of the Lunch Room Police, spotted that illicit packet of forbidden Oreos. \u00a0The eagle-eyed LRP promptly confiscated same, gave the girl something \u201cappropriate,\u201d (carrots, I believe!). \u00a0Then the school sent the poor harried mom a pre-printed letter pointing out the error of her ways and listing what ingredients were appropriate for home-made lunches. \u00a0As far as I\u2019m concerned, this whole ordeal puts a brand new spin on the name\u00a0Cookie Monster!!!<\/p>\n First let me say that in the world of lunchroom bartering (which is also no longer allowed, by the way) no kid on the planet would ever consider a carrot a fair trade for Oreo Cookies. \u00a0And speaking of lunch rooms in the old days, did anyone reading this ever show up at lunch with say, a packet of Twinkies, and have the school bully take it away, no questions asked? \u00a0Except now it\u2019s the adults, not the kids, who are doing the bullying. \u00a0The way the world is currently constituted, what a parent chooses to feed his or her child is susceptible to being judged by people in the school world and deemed to be \u201cappropriate\u201d or not. Shame, shame, shame!!!<\/p>\n By the way, it turns out that at that particular school sweets are evil only if they\u2019re being given out by the parental units involved, because the school itself uses JELLY BEANS!!!! as a reward for good behavior!! \u00a0Excuse me. \u00a0How do you spell institutionalized HYPOCRISY??!!!<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure there will be plenty of folks out there who will go to the mat and tell me that I have the facts all wrong, and maybe that\u2019s true. \u00a0After all, how much can you trust the media these days?<\/p>\n The girl in the above case was attending a private school on the school district\u2019s nickel due to overcrowding in her local public school. \u00a0That meant she was a scholarship student at a high-priced school\u2014an exclusive school, and that made her ripe for bullying, not only by her fellow students, but by the faculty as well.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I know a little too much about this. \u00a0I know, for example, that if a scholarship student is being bullied by a kid whose parents pay the full-fare, the school\u2019s faculty is likely to turn a blind eye. \u00a0In the instance I\u2019m thinking of, the administration refused for TWO YEARS, to honor the parent\u2019s request to put her son in a different classroom to separate him from the bully, even though the bully\u2014the full fare kid– was drawing pictures of her son hanging on the end of a rope or being cut up with knives or shot with guns. \u00a0Not only was the son being bullied, so was the mother.<\/p>\n The only solution, in that case, was for her to remove her son from that situation and place him in a public school where, I\u2019m happy to report, he is thriving.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s my question. \u00a0Who gave the people in the schools the right to stand in loco parentis<\/em>? \u00a0What makes school systems decide to come between the parent and child, thus eroding the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. \u00a0In the case of physical or sexual abuse, yes, we do need someone to step in and defend children (I have some first hand knowledge about that, too, by the way)! But Oreo Cookies? \u00a0Give me a break.<\/p>\n If I were packing lunches these days and received one of those pre-printed \u201cwhat-you-should-do-is notes, I suspect the next day\u2019s lunch box would be full to the brim of Jelly Beans, and let the chips (potato, of course) fall where they may!<\/p>\n Down with Cookie Monsters everywhere!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes a story shows up in the media that sends me into a fury\u2014your basic throw-your-shoe-at-the-TV-set fury. \u00a0So I didn\u2019t write about it immediately. \u00a0Instead, I put myself into a blogger\u2019s time-out. \u00a0\u201cGive it some time,\u201d I told myself. \u00a0\u201cSee if your still mad about it then.\u201d So I gave myself a couple of weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49,5,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-family","category-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-fb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}