Took me a moment to realize this was relating to the Walmart killing, and not kids letting their phones ring in class.
Murder charges are a hammer, and I see a lot of nails
WHY did we carry multiple huge textbooks under one arm?
The army had used backpacks for ages (and I used one in Scouts), but we trudged around, bent over and trying not to let the glossy-covered texts slip out of the stack on our hip.
.
And now I’m yelling at my fourth grade self: “Why didn’t you ask why it was called a cloakroom?”
The answer is that Miss Sackbutt would’ve gotten red in the face, and made me drag my big, heavy desk (with the inkwell) into that cloakroom.
I spent a lot of time in there, come to think of it…
I stayed in a rather snooty old hotel in Europe a couple months ago. Off the lobby on opposite sides were rooms where the genuinely 100 year old signs read “men’s cloakroom” and “ladies cloakroom”.
In fact both were now the lobby restrooms. With no modern signage to indicate their new functions. Odd.
There were lots of words I used without learning, or wondering, why they were called that. Why is a cat called a cat? Why is a tree called a tree? Why are stairs called stairs?
I don’t remember anybody ever having to go sit in our cloakroom. I’m not sure if they would have fit; especially if expected to take a desk in there with them. You might get told to sit up front where the teacher could see you more easily, and I have a vague recollection of somebody being told to sit or stand in the front corner for a while.
I used an internal hiking backpack in high school (grad 1978). Even had spare room for PE clothes and a jacket or sweater in colder weather. I never understood why no one else did.
Hey, what’d I do?
Whelp. Time to dry off the keyboard and get more coffee.
I do. This would lower the overall US population of working-age people AND future working-age people. We’re already near crisis-mode for Social Security / Medicare funding; with a reduced workforce, we’ll run out even quicker!
You know what you did.
You might need some time in the cloakroom to think about how you could make better choices in the future.
You’re not thinking big picture. Just expand the eligibility to cover the elderly. They can contribute by providing a source of protein while simultaneously reducing their impact on Social Security and Medicare. Win-win!
Somebody should make a movie about that.
No, a sequel - Soylent Grey.
Not even tater tots in the leg pocket of your cargo pants?
My high school eliminated the cafeteria and switched to all vending machines (some with hot food) around the same time. I completely missed the cafeteria- lunch experience. And seniors could go off-campus, like cramming a bunch of kids into Marion Rubin’s Bug and going to Tito’s Tacos.
Same in my elementary school. We knew the name so young it didn’t have any other meaning to us. It was only much later that I got a chuckle out of thinking about cloaks.
They don’t need to know about the emergency tater-tots.
My local pub serves great tater tots with their breakfast sandwiches, but I can’t stop thinking about Napoleon Dynamite whenever I order them.
I know, but I don’t know why it’s the image from the movie that’s most stuck in my head.
Heh, ‘Cloakroom’ is an old school euphemism for the bogs in Britain, as well as meaning a place where one stores one’s coat. You’re expected to be able to tell what you’ll be leaving in there from context and location.
Listen, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.