Made in the Third Grade

Everything you need to know about life you learned in kindergarten. So say a number of well-meaning people who obviously know absolutely nothing about today's world.

Seriously. You remember kindergarten. What did you learn? Sharing, making friends, obeying rules, playing fair, eating all the food on your plate, finger painting, nose picking—nothing about life in today's real world (besides maybe nose picking). No, those things, ladies and gentlemen, you actually learned in third grade.

You see, somewhere along the line between kindergarten and third grade, a seed begins to germinate and take root in the mind of children. This seed eventually grows into a tree we grownups term “maturity” or "grownupism" or “the right to stay up and watch what I want on TV when I want without anyone telling me to go to bed or else” or "I get to choose for myself what is right and wrong."

Kindergarteners and first graders are actually sweet, innocent, sharing, caring, fair playing, finger painting, nose pickers embarking on an intense journey of transformation and metamorphosis into the species of insane man-eating, vile, loathsome, selfish monsters also known as grownups. This odyssey is called life. We speak of and accelerate this character-altering sojourn when we say things to our pre-third graders like, “When are you going to grow up?” or “Can’t you imitate a mannequin for even five minutes?” or “Stop having fun with your Legos and start doing something productive like making biological weapons.”

Then we grownups go on doing our thing—imitating third graders—all the while hoping our kids will catch on to our "good traits" and say something like, “Greetings, master of the castle. May I please have the distinct honor of serving you by taking out the trash?” Little do we realize that if they were to truly imitate us (good and bad), they would be mumbling something under their breath as they walk away like, “I hope a piano falls on your head,” and connivingly con the two-year-old into taking out the trash for them while they sit in their bedroom reading comic books and eating bonbons. But that’s jumping ahead of the story, because the child is a kindergartener and has not yet "matured."

Enter third grade. It is a bountiful and abundant year for the grownup tree. It is the year when teachers and parents and the government all finally unite and decide to water and fertilize the maturity garden.

Third grade is like a miniature societal system where maturing children learn how to cope and thrive in the grownup’s dog-eat-dog world. It’s where the child’s imagination and all that the youthful mind dreams of doing or achieving gets squashed on the ceiling of aspiration’s repression like mac and cheese. It’s a demanding and rigorous boot camp created for developing the “mature” fruits of the grownup tree: lying, cheating, stealing, back-stabbing, bigotry, hypocrisy, pride, selfishness and a whole slew of other skills we grownups call “necessary traits for success in today's world.” Prior to third grade, kids just wanted to be and make others around them happy (case in point, the 20,000 apples the teacher has on her desk at any given time during the year).

For me, third grade started out innocent enough with everyone outrageously friendly as Barbie on vacation. By the end of the school year, however, it was like an overcrowded refugee camp with four Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threatening to beat up everyone with their weapons of class destruction (WCD’s), one Saddam Hussein who tortured boys on the playground, one George Bush Jr. who declared war on the axis of evil, but stopped after knocking off Saddam because the teacher said to play fair, three Rob Walton’s with oodles of cash from dad, three Madeleine Albright’s who had the brains but no looks, three Miss South Carolina’s who had the looks but no brains, three Bill Clinton’s who—no matter what they were accused of—said they didn’t do it, two Jesse Jackson’s who blamed their grades on their race and ten John Q. Taxpayer’s who mostly observed the insanity around them and said, “Wow. I think I’m going to stay out of the way, act like everything is fine, do my homework and continue living outside my means by buying Hostess donuts from the snack bar.”

You who remember third grade know I’m speaking the truth. It’s a breeding ground for rank grownupism. And because we grownups are society’s pedagogues, the ugly cycle continues its menacing course generation after generation. It’s never going to stop until we stop acting like third graders, start acting like kindergarteners and for a change really grow up.