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My daughter’s homework assignment for Martin Luther King
Junior Day was to make a poster that illustrated her dream for the world. She drew a
man handing a woman a huge dollar bill and titled it "Rich People Should
Share Their Money With Poor People". Now, she’s only five and a half, a
kindergartner, so as you’d imagine I was pretty proud of her. Almost,
but not quite proud enough to resist the temptation of telling her that
the phrase "Rich People Should Share Their Money With Poor People" was
spelled "I W-i-l-l G-i-v-e Y-o-u T-h-i-s M-o-n-e-y I-n E-x-c-h-a-n-g-e F-o-r S-e-x." Anything for a laugh, which is why when her distraught
teacher called I told her I hadn’t seen her work, her mother had helped
her with it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe "Rich People Should Share Their
Money With Poor People". When their done sharing, I think they should be
dragged from their mansions, paraded through the streets and maybe even
pilloried, although the jury isn’t quite in on that yet as I have no
idea what ‘pilloried’ means. Furthermore I believe in:
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A.) A maximum wage,
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B.) That big corporations would grind up your arms for pet food if it
increased the bottom line for their stockholders,
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C.) A Camel will pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man
shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
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D.) In ten years time, if not less, I’ll be wearing a shock collar and
living in a barracks as an involuntarily conscripted soldier in the
armed forces of Time Warner/ AOL waiting to die in a hopeless war of
attrition against Disney.
So when my daughter says "Rich People Should Share Their Money With Poor
People", I think it’s kind of sweet. On the other hand, creating the
illusion that a five year old’s Martin Luther King Day poster is a
ringing endorsement of Prostitution was simply too sweet a plumb to pass
up. I value my principle, but I value a good belly laugh more. A whole
lot more if the truth be told. This might also explain why I prepared
her for Sunday school by telling her Jesus could turn into Captain
Marvel by saying ‘Shazam’, and he didn’t do that on the cross because he
suffered from severe social anxiety disorder, just like in the Paxil
commercials. Of course it’s a Unitarian Sunday School, so it’s not like
they haven’t heard that kind of thing before.
It’s like my wife tells the kid; "The most important thing is to be
kind". The problem is, being kind is only funny if you’re a total
bastard 98.5 percent of the time, so I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Fatherhood is a full time job.
note
#1: Max Burbank still gets a kick out of that "tie a
string to a dollar bill" gag where he leaves it on the
ground and yanks it away just as a starving homeless man reaches
for it.
note #2: -RoG- believes that the starving homeless should eat their own
children. Population control.
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