A**hole Larvae: A Plan.

So it turns out I have a coming-home-from-work ritual that I just noticed today. On the way up the drive my dog barks at me from the yard and spins in circles, and I call out a greeting to him. Then I walk inside and see if anyone is home which they usually are not. I kick off my shoes at the door (we are Icelanders, after all), drop off my purse and jacket by the little bench/coat rack and the mail on the counter. Usually by this point I have emitted several high-pitched "Aaaaaaah's" like an untalented opera singer in training. This is the typical way in which my initial relief at arriving home issues forth. Then I go upstairs to my room, and if it has been a particularly harrowing day, I do an Esther Williams style swan-dive onto my as-yet unmade bed, and lie there groaning for a few seconds. Then I roll off, open the blinds in my room (since it's still dark when I leave and I'm paranoid about peeping toms among other things) and quickly change into jeans. From there I spring to the bathroom, where I wash my hands, wash off that blasted makeup, take care of any other bathroom needs, and then return downstairs to drink a glass of water and decompress. Then I am officially home and it feels so good.

Today was a particularly harrowing day, so I did require the swan dive onto my bed followed by some groaning.

I was back at my old high school again, back in that same teacher's room, and back with those illiterate monsters who will one day take over the world.

I feel I have to say... I am not a misanthropic person by nature. Sure, I prefer frolicking in fields to grocery stores, and being trapped in a shopping mall full of small spaces would be a more-than-ample personal hell for me, but I still like the occasional city, culture, art, the theater. I'm a hopeful future actress, for god's sake. I need an audience, don't I? And beyond that, I know that I am supposed to try and shine my light onto the planet, we are all related, give peace a chance, look out for your fellow brothers and sisters just trying to make it in this crazy, mixed up world of ours, one love... I'm mixing my metaphors here, but the point is, it's not that I hate people. And it's not that I hate all teenagers. I don't think of myself as a snob. But today, like all days I spend attempting to teach the unwashed pubescent in its myriad forms, I came up with a plan. And it's not a nice one either.

What if... stay with me now... what... if. We did IQ tests. And personality tests. And observed classroom behavior. Of students, through all of their elementary and middle school years and up to maybe their junior year of high school. And if they had not yet mastered reading and writing at a reasonable level for someone who should have learned how to read by age six, they would be interviewed. They would be offered tutoring, extra help, tested once again for learning disabilities. If they had all their faculties and still didn't give a good goddamn about their education, or ever getting one, and had no interest in a useful trade or art form, they would be thenceforth removed from school and the rest of society and would be used... for manual labor. Stay with me!

Think about it. These are the larval versions of the idiots who don't know how to drive on the road. The numbskull at the DMV who sends you home three times to get paperwork she claims you're missing, when on the final time you demand to see a list of passable documentation and it turns out you had everything you needed the first time around. Your neighbor who parks his ancient, enormous SUV prototype in front of your house when there are no cars parked in front of his. The moron at the crowded pizza counter who shouts over everyone to his or her boss that your credit card was declined and they don't know what to do about it. These are the pupa versions of those assholes! They're baby assholes.

We are cutting down trees for these people's houses. They thank society by throwing fast food wrappers out their car windows. Hell, they eat fast food in the first place. Each car on the road spews forth at least one ton of pollution into the atmosphere every year. Each of these people has one of those cars, and probably a loud one at that, which they drive past your house in the middle of a weeknight, not caring whose precious few hours of sleep they disrupt. They breed relentlessly and their offspring will require housing, and loud cars, and fast food to eat.

Isn't there some way we could just put them to work? Manual labor. Barracks and shared cars. Birth control. Every year they can have a chance to repent and try college, but if they mess it up they're back to work until next year's annual review.

I know it sounds horrible, but I have seen them. I have seen the future. And it terrifies me. It would terrify you, too. The good ones can be saved. The genuinely disabled don't have to be penalized. It's just the idiots I'm talking about. The asshole larvae. Think about it.