`I’m writing this post as sort of an extension of my previous one about the death of common sense, because this story just makes me shake my head with sadness while wondering what happened to the rational world. If you’ve already heard this story, than I think most will agree that it defies common sense, ands defines our over-reactive mentality these days.

Earlier this month, an elementary school in Baltimore suspended a seven-year-old boy with ADHD for eating his pop-tart into a shape resembling a handgun. When a teacher reportedly heard him say the words “bang-bang,” it was perceived as an inappropriate gesture by the school and the offending boy was suspended. The poor kid still doesn’t understand what he did wrong, and claims he was only trying to fashion a mountain out of his breakfast pastry, but instead it turned out to remotely resemble a gun. So in reality, shouldn’t the kid have been suspended for his lack of artistic skill rather than making an inappropriate gesture?

A few things struck me as wrong with this story right from the start. One: What kind of parent is too lazy to make their kid a balanced school lunch rather than just giving him pop-tarts? My mother taught me early to make my own lunch. It had to consist of a sandwich, some fruit, a treat, and some juice or money for milk. On the other hand, if this kid could fashion a gun from a pop-tart, imagine the panic he would have caused with a loaded banana or a pear resembling a grenade. Given the over-reactive school administrators, no doubt the police would have been called, the boy would have been handcuffed, jailed, and then expelled from school upon his release. I mean, that would have only been common sense, right? A seven year old playing with the food is an obvious threat to kids everywhere. The second thing that bothered me was: How many kids in this country are diagnosed to with ADHD, and then drugged out of their gourd to make them behave to grown-ups’ expectations? When are parents and teachers going to take responsibility for the kids they’re raising? This wasn’t a problem forty years ago when I was growing up. If we acted over-energetic, my mother threw us out to play till it was time for dinner. We weren’t allowed to sit around the house playing games, not even during Michigan winters, nor did we want to. We had exercise programs and Presidential athletic awards at school. In short, were always kept busy. These might be simplistic memories, but we didn’t have problems with our kids twenty years ago, either. Have parents these days just become too lazy or too consumed in their own lives to care for their children in a proper fashion? And if parents can’t make their kids behave, how are teachers going to stand a chance?

But the biggest problem I had with this story is the basic lack of common sense used to solve or avoid this problem. People simply over-reacted. No one kept their head and took the time to explain to the ked that he was doing something wrong and why. For Pete’s-sake, boys will be boys. They imitate what they see around them. What boy hasn’t played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians; games that involve guns? It’s a natural part of nature. The younger generation learns from their elders. You’re not going to change that basic law any more than you’re going to change the violent nature of today’s society. And any teacher with at least ten minutes of experience dealing with young boys is going to know they have over-active imaginations and a propensity for playing with toy guns. So, the common sense thing to have done in this situation was to have ignored the boy and let him finish his pop-tart, or at least explained to him why his gesture was inappropriate. If no one takes time out of their busy, all-consuming world to explain to this poor child why what he did is wrong, than he’s bound to do it again. But no, that’s not how things are done these days. This child has already been labeled a troubled-maker and drugged to control him, so it’s just easier to continue to blame him for making trouble. To make matters worse, this problem will continue to plague this child, since his record is permanently marked against him, to say nothing of the harassment he’ll receive from his fellow classmates for being suspended. Kids are no kinder than their parents.

What surprises me is that so far is that the boy’s parents haven’t continued in this over-reactive insanity and lack of common sense. They haven’t hired a lawyer to initiate legal proceedings against the school. Maybe there are some rational people left in the world. Time will tell.