The Most Important Thing I Learned in School This Year

By BILLY WILSON

The following is an essay written by a High School sophomore in Freyburg, Maine, as the essay part of the final exam in his English class. His teacher sent it to CounterPunch as an example of the uprightness of modern youth.


The most important lesson I learned this year in school is to pay attention in class and not to doodle while the teacher is talking. The worst thing you can do is draw a picture that shows President Bush's head on a pole with blood gushing out of his bulging eyesballs. If you do something like this, it means you're probably going to blow up the Oklahoma Book Depsitory, or fly remote conrtrol planes into the White House, like the CIA did on 9/11. Even if you're only 15 like me, you can hijack a bus (like Sandra Bullock did in that cool movie, Speed), and drive it into the Bush ranch at Waco, and burn all the children to death.

I learned that drawing pictures of the President with his arms growing out of his head is no laughing matter. It's bad to make the President look stupider than he already is. You can't draw him writing memos on wide-ruled paper with a crayon, or dressed up like a cowboy and playing with toy pistols in the Awful Office. That type of humor isn't funny. You can't make him look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine, with blood gushing out of his ears.

It is OK to draw a picture of Saddam Hussein on all fours, with Condolisa Rice in a furry African bikini and rings around her neck, holding the evildooer on a leash, and Donald Rumsfeld whacking him on the behind and making him bark like a dog, because that's just a frat prank (like the sexy girl soldier Lindy English did at that prison in IsraelI mean Iraq). But the President is God, which is why his picture is on the dollar bill, and why you can't make him look like an elephant like those soldiers did. You know. Kneeling with his feet up in the air and one finger in his nose and the other in his anus. That's really bad.

You can't draw the president's face on a stick, even if you make it look like a lollypop or a Bubblehead doll. You are a bad person if you do that and if you do that, the Secret Police will come to your house at midnight and make you stand on a box with a shopping bag over your head and electrodes attached to your generals. Then they'll bulldoze your house into dust! (Which is way cool to see them do that on TV.)

If you make fun of the president that means you hate him and are a enemy combatant. The president has so much to worry about, like his physical fitness and if he takes his sedatives on time, he doesn't need some wise-ass kid sneaking into the Lincoln bedroom at night and fucking his wife (you shouldn't say fuck), or his really cute daughters, who drink a lot and fall down at parties and are pretty easy. The president was bad too, like his daughters, before he learned that Jesus wanted him to kill all the Arabs. The president is truly blessed, so you can't tell your freinds you made a videotape of him masturbating and sent it to Seymour Hersh. You can't do that, because one of your friends may be an informer for Homeland Security and then they'll chop your fucking head off!

What I learned this year is that the President is not someone to mock. Even if he is an idiot and a war criminal who deserves to be hanged, and even if no one in the media has the balls to say so. (You shouldn't say balls either.)

Billy Wilson