When I was in middle-school, Mortal Kombat was released on home video game consoles. Because my friends and I loved the game so much, we used to draw pictures of the characters doing seriously horrible things to one another. As in, rectal-based spine-retrieval type of stuff. It was fun and it was funny...and if we did that today, I have to assume we all would have ended up arrested and in some kind of psychiatric facility. It's the only conclusion I can draw as America begins to build a tradition of penalizing, and in some cases further traumatizing, children for playing make believe in any way that includes a gun or a bomb. But to really get into a situation where stupid adults take some innocuous creativity by a child and use it as a springboard to absolutely mess with that child's state of mind, we must go to Alabama.
A Mobile, Ala., mom says school officials forced her daughter to sign a contract promising not to commit suicide or harm others after the kindergartner "drew something that resembled a gun," then pointed a crayon at another kid and said "pew, pew!" 5-year-old Elizabeth was sent home after school officials made her take a questionnaire to evaluating [sic] her for suicidal thoughts, then had her sign the safety contract promising to contact an adult if she was thinking of suicide or homicide. This all happened while her mom waited in the lobby to pick her up, the upset parent told WPMI.
Okay, everyone stop what you're doing right now and seriously think about this for a moment. A public elementary school in the United States, an agent for the public good, coerced a five year old into signing a contract promising not to goddamn off herself because she "pew-pewed" with a crayon. You know, that same thing most of us did as children? The thing where you take some object and point it like a gun and make a cartoon noise? Yeah, a five year old was confronted with the concept of suicide by the school over that.
According to her mom, Elizabeth didn't know most of the words on the contract she signed. "Suicide," in particular, was a new one for her.
"Mommy, daddy, what is suicide?" Elizabeth's mother says she asked.
Holy hell, to foist that upon a child so young is insane.
