Hyper-Sensitivity Takes a Toddler Victim

     We went to lunch with very old friends, back here after decades living in northern Israel. They returned, largely, to enjoy being new grandparents from several miles off and not thousands. In the course of a wide-ranging conversation, I asked them how their grandson, two-and-a-half, was getting on.   “Well” Marty said, “he’s been suspended from day care.”

     “At two-and-a-half?”

     “Uhmhmm.”

     Biting? (Nah)

     Spitting? (Nope)

     Kicking? (Uhuh)

     Hair-pulling? (No)

     Fighting?  (Try again)

     “Tell.”

     The dimpled miscreant was suspended from day care when, asked to sing a song for the class, as all the tots were similarly asked to do, the child violated a dearly-held nursery-school standard by mumbling a song, sing-songily, perhaps the only song he knows by heart, the official song of his family’s favorite football squad, their (and my own) Philadelphia Eagles.

     The mumbled song has the lyric “fight” three times, once in the title and twice in the body of the Opus. And that’s too much for the day-care teacher and her director, dedicated as they are to The Rules which demand that no one, ever, use Words of Violence. (They have it written down.)

     After all, two-and-a-half year-olds mumble-singing “fight” and “hit” pose a palpable threat, and Adults Who Care cannot, will not, tolerate it.

     Never mind that the “fight” in the “fight song”, to any but the most hyper-sensitive educators, means

          ‘strive!’,

          ‘play hard!’,

          ‘try to win!’,

          and not

          ‘Bash the Fuck Outa the Sonofabitch Across the Line, Throw the Bastard Down, Castrate the Schmuck Right Now! Rah! Rah!’ 

        Yet the lad remains suspended.

     In his honor, please join me (no matter which team may own your heart) as I sing.

Fly Eagles Fly – Philadelphia Eagles Fight Song Written by Charles Borrelli and Roger Courtland

Fly Eagles Fly!

On the road to victory!

Fly Eagles Fly!

Score a touchdown!

1, 2, 3!

Hit’em low!

Hit’em high!

And watch our Eagles Fly!

On the road to victory!