Giving Thanks

The table was mighty cold this year; fuel (including glorious coal) has been going up in value ever since I was a toddler. It's getting to the point where not only am I not thankful for the high prices, but I'm actually starting to complain. Never before in the history of my life have I complained about anything, as my kindergarten teachers can attest. That's right, teachers. Plural. I had a real problem with my first kindergarten teacher (Miss Shelley), the way she would always make us recite the pledge of allegiance every morning to--not the American flag--but a bust of Ozymandias. Yes, that Ozymandias. When we asked--nay, begged--to pledge allegiance to the flag, she would cackle like some kind of storybook villain. Needless to say, her reign of obscure 19th century poetry love was brutally crushed by administrative dignitaries from the district office. And I... I was a mere child, caught in the crossfire of something I couldn't understand.

My second kindergarten teacher was a little nicer than that, but barely. Now, Ms. Washington-Lincoln-Jefferson-Roosevelt-Reagan never made us violate one of the ten commandments by praying to a graven image, but she did something far worse. She taught us to believe in ourselves. "What can be so bad about that?" you ask. Shut up. Maybe you can handle believing in yourself, but as someone with megalomania, I can tell you that it was a one-way ticket to juvenile hall. Telling psychiatrists about how you filled your uncles boots with fire ants is never a good idea, by the way. Just keep that one under your hat.

They say the third time's the charm, and as far as kindergarten teachers go, the saying rings... hollow. Yes, my third kindergarten teacher was by far the best, but he was comatose. At class parties we would dress him up in a little hat and piano tie and see if we could wake him up by shouting, but he never did. We never even found out his name, but he was good. I learned more in those last two months of kindergarten than I learned in the following thirty-four grades that followed. Remember, grades you repeat still count. So what I'm trying to say is, I'm thankful. I'm thankful that, despite the best efforts of the comatose, the poets, hippies, and "The Man," I managed to survive to reach the ripe old age of infinity. As Archduke Franz Ferdinand said at 10:00 a.m. on June 28, 1914, "I am invincible! No one can stop me now!"