We Don't Need No Education

I spent a night in Delaware last week at my favorite campground. Behind it sits a great little spot of water named “Records Pond.” I was down at the water’s edge looking at the morning (pictures can be found on my Facebook page) and I had a flashback from youth on the way back to my RV.

During the short walk two school buses showed up to take away their victims. The first bus showed up halfway back, the other as I was in the grass separating the campground and Records Pond. When the second one arrived, I was kneeling down because I was real curious about the empty spaces between the wispy seed heads of a dandelion covered in frost. I saw the bus in the background and quickly spun some knobs on my camera and shot the above photo. Then the memories came rushing back.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was finish school and set about doing what big people do, without the regiment of a bus coming for me every day during the school year. I wasn’t sure what exactly grownups got to do, but it had to be better than spending a day in a building that lacked an insufficient amount of windows. (Let’s not even get into how much time they actually let us outside.) Buses brought such dread upon my soul. I clearly remember waving goodbye to my dad while I thought how lucky he was since he was off to do whatever he liked to do. I sure as heck was not.

I’m talking about a situation different than the people I got to meet who became life-long friends. I’m referring to the institution itself trying to fill me with knowledge and ideas that I knew I’d never use or did not care about. To this day I believe it was a waste of twelve years of a life that’s never promised to last until tomorrow. How unfair to do that to a person.

Sure, I learned how to read and write, find the answer to two plus two. My parents could have taught me the basics and set me free and I would have turned out just fine. Heck, I may have even turned out better if I did not make the association of certain bad influences I met along the way in the hallways of my educational prison. Team them up with an urge to rebel because I constantly felt like a caged animal and we have real problems ladies and gentlemen. I’m lucky I never ended up in a real prison or even spent a short stint in one.

There has to be a better way, especially with all the technology available today. A kid can learn the bare necessities, given some time to figure out what he or she wants to do with their life and then be allowed to go find a mentor of some sort. Want to be a pilot? Go hang around an airport. The folks that walk over to talk to a kid are real pilots, the others are not. Want to be a brain surgeon? Go find a doctor to hang around and show you the ropes, with one day at a time anything is possible. Want to understand what life is about? Go sit with a philosopher and consider his ideas without judgement. Want to become a writer? Go hangout with someone who writes. Actually, no, don’t do that. The good ones I know prefer to be bathed in solitude so you might have to learn that one on your own. Just remember that nothing is as hard as you think especially if you sprinkle passion on it.

I could be wrong about all of this. It could be that I am one of those people who are not built for how things are supposed to go or expected to be. I’ve always been cool with that except for the fact that it drove me to suffer from severe anxiety during my younger years. Nobody taught me how to feel better or handed me medication to erase my woes, I did that on my own. Also, I could have simply had terrible luck with teachers- my first grade teacher, Mrs. Beamer, is the only name I remember. The rest were not so kind to me that they made a “you will always remember me” impression. In their defense, it’s probably fairly obvious I wasn’t the happiest dude in the world to sit in their presence. Many of my friends in my adult life are teachers and I feel so happy for their students. I can tell my teacher acquaintances show up every day and sprinkle their classroom with passion.

So anyway- there I was this past week, camera in hand looking at some whimsical morning gifts from nature and along came a school bus. I know a whole bunch of kids saw me and I wonder what they thought. I know what I thought: Here I am, almost 43 years old, free to do what I wanted to do and I was actively participating in it. How cool! I still hadn’t grown up, but that was never part of the plan. Man, it felt so good to live in that one single moment.

Before I run this thing up over a thousand words I’d like to share some advice with today’s youth: You are going to have to play the game of the establishment. While you go about it I strongly suggest that you at least try to do it well. Any successes I have had in my life began with the simple act of trying. I’d tell you that I wish I had tried harder during my schooling years because maybe I would have turned out better. That would be a lie because I’m enormously happy to be who I am. Lies are not good. Couple tall tales with misbehavior and you could end up in a real prison. While I have never been there, I am smart enough to know it’s probably worse than any classroom. So be good, be pleasant and most of all, try to have fun and enjoy the experience best you can.

Darn. I did go over a thousand words, careful with that passion kids.