A Dream (Written Near-Immediately After Getting Out of Bed)

I'd been summoned to my elementary school with a bunch of other bio dork types my age to give feedback on primary grade science curriculum. There were 8-10 of us sitting panel-wise with a curriculum rep who'd just barely gotten started on the schmoozing... and there was to be much schmoozing, starting with science-type swag and working through fancy hors d'oeuvres and the like, which was, in all honesty, why most of us had agreed to come in the first place. Things hadn't quite gotten of the ground yet, so the guy on my right and I were talking casually about our elementary science classes (in relative detail, because, you know, science dorks and the like). And the rep, overhearing us, said something very flippant and self-aggrandizing about how his company must not be doing a bad job with the elementary curriculum if we were still remembering the specifics of our first grade science classes going on fifteen years later. To my surprise, I snapped back very angrily "Dude. If you'd spent four goddamn hours after school doing a goddamn useless sink and float lab for the third time, you'd remember it, too."

The rep looked absolutely shocked, not just from my most unexpected outburst but from the empathetic agreement from the student side of the table. Buoyed by this, I continued (with my compatriots chiming in more and more in unison), "I mean, the boredom and pain of this was burned into our young and malleable brains. For the love of God, man, can't you just teach them some goddamn real science?"

The combined earnestness of my outrage and ridiculousness of said plight woke me up near immediately after speaking said words.