Tuesday 20 October 2009

Child Friendly

I was prompted to post this just now, the 4 year old is happily playing with some Star Wars figures and his hotwheels cars on the carpet, and the game he is enacting at the moment consists of everyone running around (in the puppet play world) screaming in chaos and panic, "Lockdown Drill!!! Lockdown Drill!!!"

Now keep in mind, little Riordain has never experienced a Lockdown Drill because we boycott the lunacy and pull our kids from school when they are scheduled but dig: he has still picked up on what it is, and why, simply from the ambient conversations, from whatever it was his kindergarten teacher may have said to prepare her wards for 'terrorist attacks' and probably from overhearing our own conversations with parents as we trade stories of the effects of these drills on other, older children.

Did I tell you the one about the grade one little girl who didn't want to go to school because a boy had sneezed during a lockdown, and whatever it was the teacher did about it so impressed her fragile eggshell childlike mind that her dreams that night had been filled with a violence of classmates dying horribly every time they sneezed! True story, one of many I've observed while tracking the keyword on Google, and thus far, in all this time, I have not yet tracked even one actual real-world clear and present danger lockdown, only drills and over-reactions to things like highschool kids entering a school with a camera tripod.

Anyway, I got this video link from Bootsy Collins and with Riordain enacting his little tragedy drama down by my feet here on the after-school of a day that would have been his first Lockdown had he been there, it just seemed apropos to present the two together, for those who care about such things enough to stop them that is.