Yesterday was Career Day in Miss Hoffman’s Kindergarten class, and if this year’s class is anything to go by, there’ll be a lot of depressed people at the class reunion.
“Oh you know, Career Day. You get the usual crop of policemen and firefighters, a couple mailmen here or there. Those kids are fine; I won’t begrudge them those jobs. But every year there’s the astronaut-kids.” said Miss Hoffman in between sips of coffee. “There’s really nothing to do about them. You just have to look ‘em in the eye and smile while knowing these lil’ paste eaters will never make it.”
As Miss Hoffman continued, more information came up. This year alone, seventeen children raised their hands and said they wanted to explore space even though the recent sequester cuts make this an “idiotic pipe dream.” Even the closure of the shuttle program didn’t put a dent in the kids’ excited jabbering about landing on the moon. “If their enthusiasm isn’t squashed soon, seventeen more unsatisfied adults will soon join the job pool, clock in 50 years of self-loathing, and leave nearly entirely dead inside,” concluded Miss Hoffman.
“The most important Career Day take away for these kids is that no matter how much they want to be an astronaut, they’re all just rocketing towards failure. No way around it,” sighed Miss Hoffman. “I just want to show them some Challenger footage and leave it at that, but I’ll play along with their childish dreams for now.”
Despite the fact that several of her students still have trouble coloring within the lines, Miss Hoffman did her best to assure everyone that they could be anything they wanted, even telling the fat children that they could pass one of the most demanding physical examinations in the world to gain one of a dozen NASA positions. In this fantasyland that Miss Hoffman’s class lives in, a girl with glasses can magically get 20/20 vision to become an astronaut by sheer virtue of “wanting to see aliens.”
“The one little ray of light for me out of all this is that none of these kids said they wanted to be a teacher. Because, my God, this shit is thoroughly awful.”