Like Dr. M. L. King, I too had a dream.
Last night, I was magically transported back to my high school (which was a private school that housed kindergarten through twelfth grade). It wasn’t clear whether I was teacher or student, yet I was definitely an adult. It was late in the day (a typically warm early fall or late spring day on Cape Cod) and as I brought my inexplicably flaccid surfboard out to the parking lot, the headmaster was chaining his excitable blonde labrador to a pole. Together we watched as the last bus filled with laughing children drove off for the day leaving the two of us alone in the dusty parking lot under a stunningly beautiful sky.
Tom, the headmaster, looked worried. He said, “I think (noted O’Reilly editor and tech industry pundit) Andy Oram is ready to teach sex ed to the first graders.” Not only did this not shock me, but I launched in a blue tirade about how the Puritan’s rigid moral strictures continue to haunt our modern society and how those outmoded values account for many of the most ulcerous of current social problems (like the booming pornography industry, hostility toward homosexuality, the intolerance of different cultures, the “Madonna/whore”-ideal for women and, most egregious, closed liquor stores on Sunday).
Unfortunately before Tom could either respond to my comments or explain exactly why Andy Oram, a fine technical editor and writer though he may be, was the ideal candidate to negiotate the delicate waters of sexual education to the improbably young, my cat woke me with a God-forsaken meow that alerted to the tardiness of his breakfast service. In this way, gentle reader, I demonstrate that my life vacilates between nocternal Freudian terror and unspeakable real-life horror.
I suspect that Rod Serling has an unproduced Twilight Zone about me.