I've got your car right here...MAGGOT!

I guess it was in the paper the day before yesterday.

It was one of those stories that you initially think is a gag.

There was a picture of a high school kid sliding into the driver's seat of a Ford Mustang GT convertible as several admiring adults looked on. Immediately I was drawn to the story...

Why was he getting this cool ride? What had he done to merit such a nifty sled? How come I never had a slick set of wheels like that until I was WAY out of high school? You know, the usual questions of an aging yet still adolescent male.

So, I read the story.

The lad was being given this fine set of wheels for...PERFECT ATTENDANCE!

What???!! Yes, he was being handed the keys for merely showing up for school every day. DAMN! I read the story a second time because I thought I must be missing something. Turns out the only thing I was missing was not being born in this kid's generation. I hate to sound like a geezer, though that is exactly what I am, but kids didn't get cars for perfect attendance in MY DAY!

I sat on this story for a couple of days and finally decided to rant about it in a blog. Since I no longer had a copy of the paper, I decided to use Google to find the picture that originally ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune. I typed in "student gets car for perfect attendance" and was astounded to find that there are hundreds of schools doing the same thing nationwide.
I was especially intrigued by the story of the suburban Chicago twelve-year-old girl who won a car.

How do the schools promote this? Do they send a note home with the little slugs? "Make sure that Billy and Susie show up at our very fine institute of secondary learning and he or she COULD WIN A CAR!

This is NO way to run a railroad, or a school for that matter!

In my day...(God, I AM OLD), we had a different kind of incentive. It went something like this:

"Hey gang, if you skip school we can have you arrested and thrown in the motel with bars." "Oh yeah, and if that doesn't work for you, we can arrange for you to get drafted EARLY." (Yes, boys and girls we had something called mandatory military service back in my day.) Of course that was back when our government acknowledged the fact that we had enemies who needed to be "taken care of". (See: KILLED) Now, of course, we know that folks who want to destroy us are merely misguided and need to "cool off" in a fine resort facility until we can read them their Miranda rights. But, that is a rant for another day.

No...this man was our incentive for hauling our ass to school each day.

"If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even f#@&^ing human beings. You are nothing but unorganized garbastic pieces of amphibian crap. Because I am hard you will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn."---Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

Maybe the schools should try this incentive for awhile...

STAY IN SCHOOL OR I'LL BE YOUR NEXT PRINCIPAL!

"And, give me the keys to the car."

"You're gonna LOVE our school maggot!