The second the school board decided that our beloved mascot Horace the Jitterbugging Nitwit was no longer allowed in East Williamsport Middle School, they practically invited a mass shooting. Well guess what? That’s exactly what dang near happened last Tuesday. A former East Williamsport student walked into the cafeteria with a firearm and began blinding spraying bullets. Luckily the school was closed that day because of the triple whammy of an at-loose rabid hedgehog that slipped through the small hole in Mr. Clumpwicker’s 8th grade POD classroom (plywood is on backorder), the fourth bomb threat of the spring semester (you’ve earned yourself another half-day suspension, Chad Dennison Jr.), and some kind of chemical leak from the boiler room (we’re working on it, okay). But why did a gun end up into our school? I’ll tell you why…because we said, loud and clear, “Horace the Jitterbugging Nitwit: YOU’RE EXPELLED.”
Do you even remember Horace? I do. Not long ago Horace was literally, like literally literally, everywhere: On the sidelines cheering the Fightin’ Nitwits junior varsity bog snorkeling team; in the pages of the East Williamsport Middle School yearbook/used auto-parts classifieds; handing out waffle-halves at the Grand ‘Ol East Williamsport Waffle Day Parade* and Bakery Truck Demolition Derby.
Heck, I fondly remember my days as a spry pigtailed middle-school student, hearing the bell ring, and skipping to the oversized clodhoppers of the stoic eight-foot bronze Horace statue guarding the school’s main entrance. “Sorry I’m late to history class, Mr. Kitzman,” I’d say with lingering glint in my eyes. “I just had to stop and whisper my wildest dreams up at Horace.” Lordy, I was only crotch-high to a dancing doofus back then. I’ve kept Horace in my heart ever since.
Apparently the bureaucrats booted Horace from their hearts long before they booted every last trace of our community’s cherished jitterbugging nitwit from East Williamsport Middle School. “Horace’s googly crossed eyes are an embarrassment,” they said. “I’m tired of the rival West Williamsport Middle School Golden Warriors chanting undignified things about Horace’s Neapolitan romper” they said. “Horace The Jitterbugging Nitwit makes the Philly Phanatic look like a very stable cultured gentleman,” the governor said.
I wept at the first PTO meeting that wasn’t opened with a reading from The Zany Escapades of Horace The Jitterbugging Nitwit And Chums. I shake my head whenever I hear the East Williamsport Middle School anthem “Our Learning Institution Is Near Interstate 220” sung without the line “Horace, we eternally doff our fuzzy whumps to thee.” I wailed to the heavens when the crane accidently knocked over the Horace statue, and his big bronze head broke off and rolled down the hill and onto Interstate 220, causing a massive 25 car pileup. That was Horace’s way of saying, “Sorry, I don’t prevent 25 car pileups. I’m not allowed on the interstate.” Granted, his giant head physically being on the interstate at the time is undoubtedly what caused the pileup, but think of all the traffic accidents before and after Horace’s head was blocking both southbound lanes.
I hope the narrowly-avoided murder of our teenagers is a wake-up call to those with the legal authority—not to mention the moral authority—to reintroduce Horace the Jitterbugging Nitwit back into our school. It saddens me that so many precious lives were nearly the collateral damage of a single misguided decision. It saddens me so deeply, in fact, that last year was the first year I decided not to advertise my heavily-used, but acceptable, 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme front brake rotor in the yearbook. (Call me if interested.)
But what about those who claim that Horace’s removal had no bearing on the tragedy that wasn’t a tragedy merely due to the blind coincidental luck of a rabid hedgehog/bomb scare/poison leak? You will hear some people say that stricter gun laws are the best way to respond to yet another homicidal rampage with an assault rifle in a school. And in response I say: Are you freakin’ kidding me??? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again…until these shootings stop: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” DUH!!!
And, yes, sometimes falling mold-infested ceiling tiles kill people in the teacher’s lounge. (We’re working on that too.)
To those willing to unceremoniously dump Horace without considering the consequences of a Horace-less existence, I ask: Have you ever considered that maybe the answer to gun carnage is staring you right in the face? Or maybe you are just too “embarrassed” to acknowledge the truth: People kill people because they no longer have a blue frizzy-haired mascot to look up to for support, guidance, and to lead spirit rallies of the soul. So retreat back to your delusion of a gun-less paradise, where no kids are constantly at gunpoint at the one place where they should always feel safe, because guns are tightly regulated and denied to those who seek to murder as many children as possible in as little time as possible.
Me? I’ll open my heart to a jitterbugging nitwit. And if you want your children safe, maybe you too should open up East Williamsport Middle School to a jitterbugging nitwit.
HORACE, WE ETERNALLY DOFF OUR FUZZY WHUMPS TO THEE.
*We finally hope to be “fire extinguisher compliant” by Waffle Day break.
jon
http://tinyurl.com/oall5zn
