Waterfall by Dr. Seuss
"Hey, wait a minute, this picture is about sex!" commented one of my students, whom I will refer to (rather appropriately) as O, not because of said appropriateness but rather, lamely, because his name begins with this so aesthetically round, but perfectly empty, hole of a letter.
To say that O is "not the sharpest crayon" would be to put it mildly. On every occasion I have had to look into his eyes, which are roughly the color of said sexually-charged waterfall, I have met with the unresponsiveness one would expect to receive from a goldfish. Yesterday, he asked if I could teach him the ABC's, as no one had ever taught them to him before. Obviously he is a failure of the system, and if my school allowed me to give grades there is no doubt I would give this system an O for O.
But that is neither here nor there.
What was interesting about O's comment, though, was that it could have been the central claim of a term paper written by any bachelor of the arts, and, properly supported, the paper would have received an A. The orgiastic burst of color in the background confirms this analysis of sexual subtext within the art of a writer known, worldwide, for his almost magical adeptness for connecting with children. It appears Dr. Seuss has drawn an orgasm even a child can understand.
Granted, O has sex on the brain. His comment sparked a class-wide free-for-all scream-fest, accompanied by hoots, foot-stamping, and plenty of shrieks and giggles, as well as an atmosphere of embarrassment so hormonally-charged I practically had to mop up afterwards. He went on to regale his classmates with stories of two Asian women in the shower, which were immediately picked up by other hyper-sexed males with plenty to say about what was, apparently, the infamous Two Girls One Cup, as well as an obviously photo-shopped picture of a man swing his member over shoulder like a purse.
Discussing the hullaballoo later with the art teacher, I learned that his main concern was with the possible raising of excitement thresholds implicit in watching such jolting footage at a young and impressionable age. Time will tell whether he is justified in his reading of the Internet generation.
What is certain, however, is that the kids of the millenium (did I mention all of our student were born in the year 2000?) are growing up very differently than we. I didn't need my fiance's childhood stories of stealing into his father's bedroom to glimpse a Victoria's Secret magazine, hiding under the bed, to tell me that.
A child like O, however, with, shall we call it limited brainpower, may be less susceptible to manifestations of the darker twists of the mind available in online streaming. These serve as inspiration to a select few, including a certain child we will call A, who circled a video this week that chilled me to the bone. His feat of cinematography, a burst of evil genius, as some may say, features himself swinging a board at the head of an alley cat, who limps off, assumably to die in some dark corner of the world. A second scene centers on scissors cutting the cat's tail - actually a caterpillar of the type I, at their age, affectionately called a "Fuzzy Wuzzy" --- and Fin.
What so disturbs about the video - which, by the way, none of the teachers have seen, but rather learned about from students' chilling recitation of events - is its glimmer of ice-cold, cruel intelligence. It was performed as an act of cinematic triumph, and I can imagine A plotting the scene, perhaps baiting the cat with a piece of his lunchbox salami, searching among the smooth, green blades of grass for the perfect specimen of caterpillar, running his finger along the board for splinters. Is it just child's play, or are we witnessing the birth of psychopathy? And if the latter is true, can it be a consequence of over-exposure to the violent and sexual content so implicit in the Net (A has already been caught with porn on his phone), or merely the reaping of seeds sown long ago, generations ago, perhaps? After all, psychopathy has most likely existed since man drew waterfalls on cave walls. It is certainly not the Internet's offspring.
There is no answer to these questions, and even if there were, the thundering train of progress halts for no man. Certainly less so in a school modeling itself after Hi-Tech High, with a mission to prepare its students for the "real world" (now so intermixed with the virtual world the two are inextricable). I believe the term "mission impossible" has already entered my notes. But oh, the places we'll go!
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