I have already been to school. For five whole days. What do you mean, five days isn’t enough? How long is this ridiculousness supposed to last? Eight more weeks? Then what? All this again three more times? How many times do I have to do all that? FOR THIRTEEN YEARS? NEARLY THREE TIMES AS LONG AS I HAVE BEEN ALIVE? I do not accept that. I did not sign up for this. No.
School is boring. This week we coloured in a picture of Jack and Jill and we cut out a picture of Humpty Dumpty. This is what I left preschool for? What else did we do? Nothing, as far as I recall. I can’t remember. I am not at liberty to divulge that information. Your security clearance is not high enough, Mummy, if that’s even your real name.
School is too easy. I already know everything. How to colour in? Know it. How to write my name? Know it. How to read? Well, I can read some words. Like my name. Why does that not count as knowing how to read? Reading isn’t all or nothing, you know.
School is too hard. I don’t know the answers to any of the questions. The teacher asks hard things. I don’t know what things. Just hard things. I do know everything, just not those things.
There’s nothing to play with in the playground. Why is it even called that? Are we supposed to play with the ground? [She has a point here. It’s a pretty concrety school. This week, her playground — and I may know this from happening to walk past the school during lunch break, every day – has strongly resembled the exercise yard in a medium-security prison for mushrooms. Everyone is wears matching clothes and broad-brimmed hats, which make it impossible to identify your friends, should you made any. The safest thing to do is keep walking slowly in a clockwise direction, not making eye contact with anyone.]
It’s not fair. Why doesn’t Garnet have to go? Two days of preschool doesn’t count. I want him in the trenches too.
You keep saying it’s not up to you; that it’s up to the government. But the government is not in charge of me. I am in charge of my body, as you keep reminding me, so it is my right to not take that body to school. Who is he, anyway, this government? It’s lots of people? Ladies and men? What will they do me if I don’t go to school? Oh, they won’t do anything to me, but you and Daddy might get in trouble? Well, I can’t see a problem then.
It’s been a bit of a week around here. Tonight there will be pizza for all, hooch for the grownups, and ice cream for the amazing May Blossom and Garnet, who battled bravely through five and two days, respectively, of formal education. All and all, they’re just another pair of bricks in the wall.
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