Editor, The News:
It is Income tax season, looking-for-a-holiday-in-February season, will-summer-just-hurry-up-and-arrive season, or, as I now know it, cyber-season.
You got that right, it is now the last day you can sign your Grade 6 kid up for cyber-school – at schools I may name later if cyber-bullies don’t come to my cyber-door and cause me a whole load of cyber-grief.
Barring that, by not signing up, your kids will be cyber-ostracized because everyone knows that cyber-school ‘rocks,’ and you’re an epic failure if you’re not cyberized.
That sentence was so long that I just lost the everyone-under-30 crowd who probably text-ed twice, tweeted once, and took their I-Thingamajig to the bathroom where no self respecting I-Thingamajig would ever go.
When did we stop liking real people? It is a question for the ages.
When I was a youth, and it was not that long ago, before the internet but after Darwin’s Origin of the Species, I believed that the coolest thing out there were other human beings!!!!! (I put that many exclamation marks at the end of that sentence – or OMG marks – just to let any kids still reading that I’m kinda bummed).
Cyber-school is the end of days. There will, however, be another 100 or so other end of days because I am ancient and don’t understand, but for me that tips the scales toward total social breakdown.
‘Cyber’ should be what Scottish people talk about to their grand wee-ones, as in, ‘I slew the Anglish Harde with my Syber Goddamnit,’ and shouldn’t that be true when we use ‘cyber’ and ‘school’ in the same sentence.
When kids go to school, they are going to learn and be socialized. They are, for all intents and purposes, like dogs at a dog park. I am simplifying it, but try taking a dog for a walk and let him loose around other dogs if he’s never seen one. Kids are like little plants, (or dogs), they need nurturing and they need to finally get exposed to the elements, and by elements I mean other kids.
We are talking about grade sixers and grade seveners, here, these are not adults that can self-motivate and make adult decisions. Maybe they should be socialized by then, and hopefully they’ve experienced what they will come to know one day as ‘real life,’ before they have to get a job interview, pick a ‘look,’ and come to grips with hormones.
If not, I wish them luck on their first cyber-date and their first cyber-kiss and their first cyber-dad giving them their first cyber-lesson on when to bring their cyber-daughter home before they go all Scottish on him and break out a real ‘syber’ and kick some non-socialized butt.
Randy Wagner
Maple Ridge