"If I Were In Charge of the World" by my son

[SMinGA]

Excerpt from a poem by my 6th grade son:

If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn't have rich
You wouldn't have poor
You wouldn't have dog fights
Or "Maxed out credit cards"
You wouldn't even have credit cards


He says it was inspired by Judith Viorst, so now I need to look up her work.

Some of it was more typical kid stuff:

If I were in charge of the world
I'd incinerate homework,
Schoolwork,
Grades, and work overall

If I were in charge of the world
There'd be getting paid for nothing
Trainable cats, and
Auto learning helmets.

[MSbklawyer]

Yeah, when I was a boy I dreamed up the "auto learning helmet" too. You just put that sucker on your head and it would zap whatever knowlege you needed directly into the brain. That device always became a popular fantasy right around 6-week term test time.

The getting paid for nothing idea has become reality and has been wildly successful here in Mississippi. We got housing projects by the square mile full of people who have been getting paid for nothing for 7 or more generations.

[MakinMeCrazy]

What a wonderful young man he is...the reason I say this is the "dog fight" part.......it touched me.......I have always been an animal advocate and to see that this was included in his poem tells me......he is a kind and caring boy who will become a kind and caring and wonderful young man. You are VERY VERY Lucky to have him as a son! I wish him only the best in life, that one line touched my heart!
Karen P

[SMinGA]

He is something else, though of course I think so! I thought the 'trainable cats' part was funny. We have one that is rather crazy... She'll run thru the house and jump onto the kitchen window. Often she is going too fast to stop and will fall out of the window to the kitchen floor. Kind of like her landing strip is not long enough. She never learns...

Even though they are young (9, 10, 11) I make an effort to teach them about good money habits. Like they understand that a 'debit' card uses money from our bank account, and that 'credit' cards use money you have not yet earned. And also that 'credit' cards charge extra - so buying something on credit costs more. At the grocery store on Saturday after checking out, my youngest asked: Did you use your debit card? I said yes, and she answered "Good!"

What a wonderful young man he is...the reason I say this is the "dog fight" part.......it touched me.......I have always been an animal advocate and to see that this was included in his poem tells me......he is a kind and caring boy who will become a kind and caring and wonderful young man. You are VERY VERY Lucky to have him as a son! I wish him only the best in life, that one line touched my heart!
Karen P

[flyinbroke]

Yeah, when I was a boy I dreamed up the "auto learning helmet" too. You just put that sucker on your head and it would zap whatever knowlege you needed directly into the brain. That device always became a popular fantasy right around 6-week term test time.

In my area, bomb threats to the engineering building seemed to override the auto learning helmet idea at midterm/final time... We always knew there was someone who did not study for thermodynamics.

The getting paid for nothing plan is wildly successful in this country as a whole with efforts passed from generation to generation. And they have better hair and nails than I do...grrr.

[lookingforward]

The getting paid for nothing idea has become reality and has been wildly successful here in Mississippi. We got housing projects by the square mile full of people who have been getting paid for nothing for 7 or more generations.

Here in Louisiana too. I worked in registration at a hospital and actually saw, more than once or even twice, great grandmothers in their 30s, great great grandmothers in their 40s, none of which in any generation ever held a job of any kind. Recently at my current library job when the stimulus payments went out, we had people come in and ask what income tax was. They had to file to get the stimulus payment but had no idea how to go about it. They would proudly state that they had never had a job or filed taxes in their life.
I can't believe that our system works that way, but it does, I've seen it.

[lookingforward]

SMinGA, your son sounds like a sweetheart! I have one that age too, and I wish you could hold the sweetness in forever, and skip the older teenage angst.