- From the introduction to "How Hollywood Distorts The American Educational Experience"
 

     So, ding dong, the month is dead.  Which old month?  The August month.  So, ding dong, the August month is dead.  I personally believe that Prof. Plum did it in the kitchen with a lead condom, but enough about my irrelevant fantasies.  The fact that August is indeed dead now and already stinking up the summer can only mean two things: 

• It's now September.
• My horrible school flashbacks have started again.

     It's the same thing every year.  At 12:01 a.m. every September 1st, I suddenly find myself back in kindergarten, learning the hard way all over again that fingerpainting and nose-picking don't mix. 
     Learning the hard way, too, that not all kindergarteners are created equal.  Some get new and pretty and softly stuffed vinyl mats to nap on, and some get burlap sacks only made available by the timely demise of an incontinent poodle.
     Learning as well that while some tykes might feel blessed and satisfied by a single jam-smeared Ritz cracker, others are merely moved to go on a tongue-flapping rampage through the cloakroom in a futile quest for more.
     The worst of it comes about 3 a.m. when my feverish brain finally descends to the depths of the darkest kindergarten memory of them all.  That's when I find myself once again on the classroom floor, playing with The Blocks.
     "I'm sorry, Danny," the stern voice of a lumbering Teachersaurus avalanches down into my tender ears, "but we don't allow tip jars in this school."
     "But how will the others show their appreciation for my creations before their vocabularies are up to the task?" I meekly inquired.
     "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" the terrible roar of the Teachersaurus erupted and filled the hallways as its stubby little legs sent it running to find its peers so that they, too, might come and enjoy the spectacle of a child whose belief in the powers of his own creativity had not yet been utterly squeezed out of him by regimentation, ridicule, and rote memorization.
     Oh, how I hate this annual trip back to the real three R's....

     The coma-like faint that follows these first flashbacks sometimes leads my addled brain  to believe that they're at an end.  Of course they are merely enjoying a temporary recess which studies commissioned by the maker of nightmares have shown allows them to come back fresh and reinvigorated. 
     It is just after breakfast that those set in first grade calmly get up and start slapping their rulers across the knuckles of my mind.
     "Today, class, we are going to learn how to write cursive."
     "Write cursive?!  I get smacked if I so much as whisper a cursive!" I protest.
     "I mean to say that we are going to learn how to write complete words without a single break."
     "Without a single break?!  Doesn't that violate the Child Labor Laws or something?!?!"
     "We are going to take different letters and put them together on paper without lifting our pens and pencils."
     "And then do we douse 'em with a bucket of water to separate 'em again like my neighbor did with his dogs??  I think I'm gonna need more paper!!!"
     I spent an awful lot of time sitting in the hallway in first grade, permanently crippling my penmanship by neurotically crossing my t's too tightly....

     The second grade flashbacks usually kick in around 10 a.m. - sometimes earlier if faux summer school tortures materialize to rush things along. 
     The first starts with my repeated failed attempts to extract the square root of "CAT" and ends with my first trip to the nurse's office for nervous exhaustion.
     The second involves my relentless, evangelical petitioning of the principal to adopt my decimal alphabet system.  It sounds slightly crazy now, but back then I really believed that the world's salvation lay in the widespread use of fractional vowel sounds carefully calibrated to reflect the tiniest nuances of human thought, feeling, and masturbatory technique.  Much to my surprise, that principal managed to convey the fullness of his disagreement using only the centuries-old system of written communication and a pre-printed referral letter to the district psychologist.
     The worst second grade flashback, however, involves my first love.
     "See Dick.  See Jane.  See Spot.  See Dan watch the news every night in hopes of hearing that Dick has been killed in Vietnam so he can move in and comfort Jane with the latest fingerpainting/nose-picking research reports until she finally let's him pet Spot for as long as he damn well wants."
     Alas, the Vietnam War ended far, far too soon for some of us....

     But enough for now.  My waiting room is filling up with sick flashbacks forced to cool their heels well past their appointment times as I write this instead of ushering them into my office, one by one, so that they may once again play with my mind while breaking my heart.  They seem to be becoming increasingly irate, judging from the audible reddening of their imagery, and who can blame them?  The TV I have blaring out there is permanently set to C-SPAN. 
     ACK!  They've found The Blocks!!  
     Gotta run!!!!!