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I went to see a film last night called Attack of the Ankle-Biters. It was all about three-year-old terrorists threatening to take over the world. They caused such a stir that the Prime Minister himself declared a law ordering the control of all people whose height was lower than his knee cap.
The story was quite compelling really. You see, the intelligentsia (I think that's how you spell it) were in a continual state of fluster, bouncing their bitten nails off keyboards and flicking pens over paper in the name of bureaucratic sadism; all in an attempt to protect society and its man-eating money-making machines and keep them all safe from potentially violent teenagers. The watchful eyes of these self-made, over-ruled, wall-eyed good-doers scanned the kindergartens of the nation on the lookout for any “ankle-biter” who showed the teeniest weeniest bit of aversion to the normality of civilized consumerism.
“They will be normal or they will be removed to training homes to teach them how to conform! We are a free nation! A nation of liberty and justice! We will (he thumped his fist on the desk for emphasis) enforce freedom at all costs!”
After these touching words, which brought tears to the eyes of onlookers and claps of “More! More!” from the audience, the bureaucrat tickled his undersized black moustache, which sat under his nose like a giant mosquito about to pounce (perhaps on a stray ankle-biter) and raised his arm straight in front of him in a kind of salute to (I'm not sure really) truth or justice or liberty. Anyway, the story goes on.
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The bureaucrats were like so many eyes on a monstrous alien, scanning the earth for signs of intelligence and finding none, but refusing to leave. After all, their jobs relied on the fact that they would find “ankle-biters” and find evidence to confirm their hypotheses that uncontrollable toddlers were the greatest threat to modern man. That would keep the computers humming, the ATM machines of the nation popping out cash, the politicians nodding with broad smiles, and the ankle-biters forced, in the name of democracy, to cut, color, paste, and draw pictures of docile people borrowing exorbitant amounts from banks, shopping in gigantic shopping malls, and complacently accepting their debt-ridden existence for the good of the nation.
The bureaucrats started training sessions for kindergarten teachers and assistants so that they would recognize the signs of budding reformists, environmentalists, or even worse still, “free thinkers,” and nip those little troublemakers in the bud.
But this had to be done in a nonviolent way that would protect the sensitive nature of preschool potential bullies, after all, it would be most embarrassing to have them caned, made to stand in the corner, or any other kind of medieval form of discipline or control. No! Things had to be done in a modern and somehow enlightened way. The problem was, how? A short meaningful slap on the behind sounded much more feasible (and faster) in reforming the ankle-biters, once discovered, but no, the elections were coming up and it would be impossible to be clearly brutal after all that talk about children’s rights … blah, blah, blah.
So they came up with the brilliant idea of displacing all would-be, considered-to-be, perhaps-may-be, possibly-could-be ankle-biters in detention centers that were called “foster homes.” With a sigh of relief, (he had finally come up with an idea, an original thought [he hoped]) the main bureaucrat said, “Displacing threats to the nation is kinder than corporal punishment.”
Then the audience shouted in unison, is a show of human solidarity based on … well, I'm not sure what to call it. “Oh yes! True! Down with smacking ankle-biters! Displace children! It's their right! Displaaaace! Displllaaaacccceee!” Finally, the chanting died down.
These words soon turned into placards that were paraded up and down main streets with teary eyed well-wishers shouting in unison, “Don't beat! Don't humiliate! Displace! Displace! Displace!”
Now the film was reaching its climax.
The bureaucrats faced one little teensy weensy problem though. They had to find the ankle-biters, make a pigeon-hole in which to stuff them, make sure they followed the already confirmed hypothesis until they reached teenagehood, and then, and this was the hard part, prove that they were nice, conforming, non-trouble making, materialistic, slightly promiscuous, not too outspoken teens that only got into “normal” goings-on that teens do normally when they are normal and living in their normal environment under normal conditions. The problem was defining that doggone word “normal” and proving that without the displacement the ankle-biters would have thrown society into rounds of terror and uproar. Proving what could have been is a researcher’s biggest nightmare.
Anyway, the bureaucrats sat up late into the night, biting their pencils, arguing over pretzels at long-running meetings, finally throwing plastic files at each other, and debating the meaning of words whose meanings had not yet been contorted out of shape.
“Thank God the English language is so flexible,” cried one, “we can just invent a new word or change the meaning of another and dispense with that other one. You know the one I mean,” he whispered, “normal—shhh!”
The bureaucrats then received a call from the prime minister.
“Blzzppp brrruuurrrppp,” came the sound from the phone.
“Oh yes, sir,” cried the bureaucrat, saluting to the phone.
“No, sir,” he continued.
“Oh, of course, sir! Yes sir! No sir! Three bags full, sir!”
He wiped his brow nervously when he got off the phone, turned to his exhausted, fed-up colleagues, and announced, “The prime minister has thought of a new word.”
“Thank God!” said another bureaucrat as he looked at his money fondly and counted it.
“What is it?” asked another bureaucrat, yawning with excitement.
“Well,” said the bureaucrat who had been talking to the prime minister on the phone, “the boss said we have to talk in the language of the youth, so they can identify with us and the concepts we are forcing on them, I mean, er … presenting to them," he said, yanking his tie and loosening it a bit so that he could breathe more easily.
“So what did he suggest? Come on, out with it!”
“He said that the goal of reforming the ankle-biters is not to make them normal (Oh! God forbid that horrible, indefinable word, he said under his breath), but we should confine the definition of their desired future state to be what is commonly known as “baaaaaad.”
“Uh?” said the other bureaucrats, looking blankly at the first.
“You know, cool, not a nerd … bad!”
“Oh! Bad!” they said, all nodding together.
"So, all ankle-biters are first going to be identified (problem), then labeled (easy), displaced (real easy), trained (brain washed—super duper easy), and taught to be “baaaad” (like taking candy from a baby!)
“So,” cried the other bureaucrats, “we have solved the problem; the biggest problem to have faced mankind since, since, since … well, never mind.”
“The biggest problem since I started working here,” added the first bureaucrat with a heavy sigh.
That film really changed my life. It made me think. I’d been munching popcorn the whole way through the film. I began to think about my diet and how I should really take more care of myself. Too much salt, too much fatty food. Anyway, with a dull look on my face, I went home and looked at my old photo album and skimmed through pictures of my early days. Those good-old-kindergarten, fun-in-the-sun, life-is-a-breeze days of my life. I saw one picture of me sitting there with a scowl on my face, grabbing a pencil off some scrawny kid next to me, and my teacher hovering over me with a permanent smile on her face, ordering me to draw ATM machines and shopping malls….
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