school incidents

So your criteria for a good authority figure is how loyal they are to their beliefs and how competent they are.  I have heard the part about competency before but i think this is the first time I've heard about staying true to their beliefs.  Just as a thought experiment, if that teacher had said no blue jeans, because I said so.  The hell with democracy and the hell with what you want.  I have been put into this position by people with authority higher than mine who I obey without question, and likewise it is your duty to obey me without question.

That would make her true to her ideals, and I assume she would be competent, so then would that make her a good authority figure?

Was that blue jeans experience that strong with you?  The way you mention it so often it seems like a seminal experience, or maybe it's just something you use as a metaphor.

I had a somewhat similar experience in high school.  It was an English teacher, a younger guy.  I think we liked younger teachers because we thought they would be more like us than the usual fossils.  Anyway the discussion subject of the day was some writer who had some theory like every cloud has a silver lining, and some good and some bad falls into each of our lives and it all evens up in the end. 

That didn't sound right.  Earlier we had been discussing Poe, or somebody like him, somebody who had setback after setback and died relatively young, and I was all, what about this guy, and what about guys who everything turns up roses?  Surely each life doesn't turn out equally sunshine and rain for everybody.  And I said as much, but he disagreed, and I disagreed with him, and finally, in so many words, he said because I said so.

In retrospect maybe I don't have the issues quite right, and maybe it had been a long day for the guy and I'm sure I was always a pain in the ass, and maybe he just wanted to go on to the chapter four review which would be on the test.

But it just sat wrong with me.  I never liked being told what to do, but I was kind of used to it, and I could see where there was some utility to it, but being told what to think seemed to me a much greater wrong.  What to do is just your body, but what to think is your mind.

It wasn't a big deal for me like your blue jeans incident, but it has stuck in my mind while so many other things have fallen away, and I thought I would mention it.

You should feel guilty about advantages you had growing up.  Many of your privileges were not available to others and you profited thereby.  But we have squabbled over that many times before, and seeing as how you have never sinned ftpotd, and are an excellent human being and somewhat humble to boot, I am going to give you a pass on that.

In the long run I suppose no problems are ever solved, we have pretty much the same problems we had back in biblical days, but I think governments can make situations right or wrong in the short one.  How about slavery in the USA, didn't government solve that one?

Hemmed in by hostile people?  Why these are all my friends.  As everybody knows the good people of Chicago live together in peace and harmony.  We do worry about Beagles though, all alone on that icy spot so close to a foreign country bigger than the USA, and so full of all those wrongheaded ideas, and led wrong by one of our very own educators at a tender age.  We feel guilty.

Even now, out my window, I can hear the hammers and sinews as the armada is being built for the big sail up the lake so that we can all comfort him and lead him unto the right path.  And of course that gay dog will be following the fleet in a little rowboat.