Hot Toddy Tackles Education

This morning I woke up at 5:30 a.m. faced with a choice. I could either cry because I woke up without Thor's arms around me, or I could transform the United States education system. One box of kleenex, a quick phone call to my company-sponsored mental health hotline, and a tear-soaked pillowcase later, I realized I still had plenty of time to transform education before I got to the office. So, here is my plan.

First of all, we need to get these kids in school earlier. Children are waiting much too long to get out there and learn. That is why we lag behind other countries in our duty to educating our young citizens. Children need to start attending school the minute they stop breast-feeding. Or we could just hire lactating teachers and get those kids to school even sooner.

Starting school earlier means, of course, the children will need to brush up on communication skills sooner too. It is my stance that infants need to have at least a passing knowledge of the language spoken in their native country prior to being born. If a fetus is about to be hatched, or whatever, in Guatemala, he or she damn well better be able to comprehend - um - Guatemese - before he or she pushes through the birth canal.

I am not insisting babies be able to actually speak their native language fluently, but I do not think it is too much to ask that they understand basic commands such as, "Please stop crying" or "Mommy had a few too many martinis tonight and needs to sleep off her drunken stupor, so please don't plan on waking her with your incessant howling before noon tomorrow."

I am working on some other plans to help socialize our children in school, such as ostracizing the ugly kids from the hot kids without waiting for them to do it themselves in junior high. I am a firm believer that the ugly kids should eat lunch in a separate section of the cafeteria, and this should begin in grade school. Why allow ugly children to grow up with the false hope that they are as good as everyone else when their self-esteem is bound to be shattered in a few years anyway? The sooner children who aren't hot learn to eat with others like them, the better off everyone will be.

Finally, teachers, especially the lactating ones, must be rewarded heartily for their self-sacrificing devotion to having three months off every year shaping young lives. Teachers should be picked up for school in limousines every morning and should get signing bonuses and free massages and gift certificates to TGI Friday's simply for showing up to work. I couldn't do what they do for one day. For one thing I would flirt with the hot boys in my class and be fired immediately. But even if my inappropriate advances somehow made it under the radar, I know there is no way I could commit to being on time for class every single morning.

So, I will just make decisions about education and tell everyone how to change that institution without actually having experience or, for that matter, any knowledge whatsoever about the system. Just like our politicians.