Some rules kids won't learn
in school
Text By Charles J.
Sykes
Printed in San Diego Union
Tribune
September 19, 1996
Unfortunately,
there are some things that children should be learning in school, but don't.
Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modest back-to-school offering,
here are some basic rules that may not have found their way into the standard
curriculum.
Rule
No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase,
"It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said
it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When
they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule
No.
1.
Rule
No. 2: The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much as your
school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good
about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem
meets reality, kids complain it's not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
Rule
No. 3: Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you
won't be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear
a uniform that doesn't have a Gap label.
Rule
No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. He doesn't
have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going
to ask you how you feel about it.
Rule
No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parents had a
different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't
embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit
around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Rule
No. 6: It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This
is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not the boss of
me," and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn
18, it's on your dime. Don't whine about it, or you'll sound like a
baby
boomer.
Rule
No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now.
They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you
tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain
forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents'
generation,
try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Rule
No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. In
some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right
answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class
valedictorians
scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results.
This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
(See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4)
Rule
No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summers off. Not
even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And
you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we're at
it, very few jobs are interesting in fostering your self-expression or helping
you find yourself. Fewer still lead to
self-realization.
(See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)
Rule
No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems
will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life,
people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will
not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.
Rule
No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
Rule
No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next
time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's
what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself"
with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule
No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression
that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you
obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule
No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother,
and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a
kid. Maybe you should start now.
You're
welcome.
