I actually want to go to school

Opinions of a five-year-old aspiring kindergartener

By Patrick Vaillancourt, Columnist

Mommy has been staying home from work these days. She needed to take time off working at the restaurant because she says I can’t go to school. She said the teachers are fighting with the government people. That can’t be good; mommy says fighting is bad.

Daddy says that all of the teachers want more money. I get a $2 allowance every week, and I’m usually pretty happy with it. I go to the store to buy candy, and sometimes daddy gives me his change when he sends me to go buy milk or bread. I have to go to the store for him sometimes when he has a little too much of his “wobbly pop.”

Daddy says the teachers want $5,000 to sign some kind of contract thingy. I didn’t know you could make money just signing something—I thought only really famous people got paid for autographs.

And that’s for every teacher! I don’t know how many teachers there are in BC, but if they all want $5,000 to sign a paper, that’s really huge money. That’s like a gazillion-bazillion dollars. Ugh, I’m going to be paying taxes forever if they want that much money.

Wow, a whole $5,000—imagine the things I could do with that! I would be super rich. I could take over the world with that kind of money. But I’m a simple kid, so I’d probably just buy a cool bicycle and get all the candy in the store. I really like those cinnamon hot lips—they are spicy, but really good.

I thought my summer vacation would be over by now. Usually, when mommy takes me shopping for back-to-school, I expect to go to class soon after. At least that’s how it was last year when I started junior kindergarten. This year I’m going to senior kindergarten, which is really good because they don’t make us do that stupid nap time anymore.

It’s funny though—I actually want to go to school, but it’s the teachers that don’t want to go back. I like summer vacation, but now I have to stay home with mommy and all she does is watch boring TV shows. This one show she watches is really weird: there is a mommy who doesn’t know who the daddy is, and this old man comes out and tells her who the daddy is. Sometimes there could be five daddies on the stage, all thinking they are the daddy. I think the people on that show need to go to school like me because they do not seem very smart—everyone knows it’s one mommy and one daddy—except for my school friend James, who has two daddies—lucky for James.