Death Die Dead

To all the protectors of children out there: why bother? Here’s a note I found on the floor of a sixth-grade classroom: ARE YOU A VERSION. They can’t even spell. You know that Lord of the Flies book. Those kids killed Simon. He was the best character. So what if I would have done the same thing. So what if I used to yell I WISH YOU WERE DEAD to everyone I loved. Children are clumsy and dumb. They are the number one cause of peanut allergies. Protect them by bathing them in castor oil. Don’t say that around them, your sister says, pissed. Change the subject. Okay, okay. But kids aren’t scared of death anyway. Because they don’t care about anyone else alive. Maybe they should be the ones who have to deal with tragedy firsthand. Send them out with the golden retrievers to comfort victims of school shootings. Growing up, I played a game with my siblings called Death Die Dead. Wielding plastic axes, we’d skate around the basement and fake murder each other. We were too safe in our cuteness, we knew nothing about life. Another example is Macon Dead. He was a real brat. He didn’t want to become a doctor because he didn’t want the initials MD, MD. The kid in me thinks there’s not a better reason than that.