Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I decided to treat ourselves to Golden Corral. While I was enjoying my steak and tortilla chips, I momentarily glanced out the window and into the parking lot where I saw what may very well be the last true American family. A father, a mother and three children of fifteen, ten and seven, all Golden Corral skinny. To my surprise, they were passing around a vape like a cabal of college students listening to Pink Floyd. And I do mean all of them. The Freshman, the Little Prince and Cindy-Lou Who of five years, plus two. As the youngest of them took a puff, I was able to see something in the vapor: a vision of pure, free, American parenthood.
Each puff was an act of rebellion against tyrants: tyrants who tell you how to raise your children. Why should they? They’re your posterity, your lasting mark on the world. You pained and pushed for hours on end as they plopped out of you. Or you read a magazine while the ordeal went down. Either way, you made them and you own them now. Is there a doctor on Earth who should have a say in what your Freshman puts in his body? Absolutely not! That decision is yours. Be it poison, be it all-natural, be it ivermectin. No “Bill Nye the Devil’s Spy” is going to tell you how to raise your child. It is written in the soul of our nation that a child’s being is dictated by the will of their parents, for better or for worse.
I’m grateful that these patriots fight for my rights. I plan to have a child one day. What a chance for bold experimentation! I’ll tell them that the Sumerians invented the left shoe and the Celts invented the right, Mars is fake and the only true planet is Pluto, waterbeds are filled with AriZona Iced Tea to save money on materials. I’ll teach my firstborn to be a flat-earther, my second to be a cube-earther and my third a dodecahedron-earther. It’ll be my right to teach my kid whatever truth I decide is true. The mind of a child is like a thumbdrive. I may fill my thumbdrive with pdfs of peer reviewed articles, or with Tweets of screenshots of Reddit posts. Teachers want to teach our children so-called objective truths and historical evils. When I have a Little Prince of my own, how will he reach for the stars if he’s brought back to Earth with reality? Flintstones vape in hand he will discover a reality far greater than our own.
“But what will we do when all of our children are in a world of their own?” you may say. “None of them will be on the same page.” Well I say that some of the best books have many pages, such as “War and Peace” or “The Great Gatsby.” Even bad books have multiple pages, like “Clifford the Big Red Dog Takes a Trip.” You say our children should be unanimous in every belief, thought and action, but I say monotony is the death of a society’s soul. The average person shouldn’t do cocaine, but people who frequent the snowblower make much better moves than those who don’t. And a doctor can feel comfortable asking you to drop your pants, but priests never should. Cindy-Lou will never have to be on anyone else’s page. She’ll be her own person: a free thinker. The world is corrupt, and I hope she’s never corrupted by it. Her flesh and blood are an untainted combination of her parents’. Why should her mind or heart be any different? Why should her teacher become a part of her? Her doctor? Her friend? Her parents are all that she’s ever needed and all she’ll ever need. Don’t let society make her something she was never designed to be.
As I stared out into that Golden Corral parking lot, it was as though I rested in the Pennsylvania State House, a spectator to the Second Continental Congress. When the father handed that blueberry blast vape pen to his daughter, I saw glimpses of John Hancock mightily scarring his name into the Declaration of Independence. I was humbled by their lust for freedom. My fork fell to my plate as I raised my hand to my forehead and saluted the last true American Family.