(Tacoma, WA) "Poor is the student who does not better his teacher," began my son's explanation. I have shared little bits of the thinking which has gone into my book "Victims of Process: How Unwritten Recipes Run People's Lives" with my kids and George II in particular.
One of the things I taught him early-on was that process trumps just about everything if you can just find the right authority lever to pull.
As an example, when he was in high school, and for some reason, or other, he decided to order pizza for his whole class at one of the high schools in the Kirkland/Juanita area east of Seattle.
This was many years back, but the long and short of it was that his pizza were seized by the teachers - who proclaimed there was "no eating in study hall."
Worse, once confiscated, the teachers then went into the student lounge and ate George's pizzas!
George was furious, and upon learning the details of the incident, so was I. But I thought "Gee, what a wonderful teaching moment about how "authority" behaves when it meets with "process."
So the school district was contacted in a formal way, and a copy of any regulation or administrative document, duly authorized by the superintendant and reviewed by the district's legal office, under which the pizzas were seized was requested.
We then asked for (and in a very formal way, with a cc: to my then counsel) where the district rules were regarding the conversion to personal use or consumption, the pizzas which at the time had set G2 back around $48 dollars if memory serves me.
One of the things I taught him early-on was that process trumps just about everything if you can just find the right authority lever to pull.
As an example, when he was in high school, and for some reason, or other, he decided to order pizza for his whole class at one of the high schools in the Kirkland/Juanita area east of Seattle.
This was many years back, but the long and short of it was that his pizza were seized by the teachers - who proclaimed there was "no eating in study hall."
Worse, once confiscated, the teachers then went into the student lounge and ate George's pizzas!
George was furious, and upon learning the details of the incident, so was I. But I thought "Gee, what a wonderful teaching moment about how "authority" behaves when it meets with "process."
So the school district was contacted in a formal way, and a copy of any regulation or administrative document, duly authorized by the superintendant and reviewed by the district's legal office, under which the pizzas were seized was requested.
We then asked for (and in a very formal way, with a cc: to my then counsel) where the district rules were regarding the conversion to personal use or consumption, the pizzas which at the time had set G2 back around $48 dollars if memory serves me.
As you might expect, there was nothing written and "approved" which authorized the confiscation of food from school kids, and worse for the teachers, there was nothing authorizing them to eat their ill-gotten gains.
After a short interval (with lawyer and press conference in the wings) George II quickly got his money refunded by the teachers, and thereafter had a miserable time in school - which resulted in his later dropping out and going the GED route and the on into emergency medicine via a circuitous route.
But the main thing was it demonstrated how people will often act as though they have authority even though, when real authority comes a calling, they don't and in turn can be "taken down" for exceeding their limited powers.
-- Fast forward to dinner and my son telling us about going shopping with Gary, his dachshund.
He explained that he got to take his dog anywhere we wanted because he was a "service dog".
But wait! Didn't people question a Dachshund as a service dog?
Well, yes, of course. But he had made up a fictitious organization which gave dogs to people with this particular kind of mental dysfunction issue, and thus, were entitled to a service dog.
Does everyone buy it?
No, of course not. Until, that is, he gets out the "service dog card" which he made up, complete with an elaborate hologram built into the obviously commercial-grade card which included a registration number for the dog!
"Poor is the student, Dad..."
Yeah, yeah, I'm getting that.
I made a note to share this as a fine example of simply defining the authority hierarchy, figuring out what its internal rule-set is, and then simply acquiring the right symbols which then give one authority to use as they see fit.
Scary? Gary the dog is extraordinarily trained, and no, he doesn't go into restaurants, G2 doesn't overplay his hand, but it provides an ongoing study and insight into how people lay down to symbols as simple and uncomplicated as a laminated card with something fictitious but very official-looking on it and with a dandy hologram. Detail and execution counts.
Works for uniformed services and various other authorities, too, so in the larger context, all G2 did was simply leapfrog to his own ends using the heavily programmed "card symbol acceptance gene" which humans have been bred to respect using but which is readily apparent using the "reduced instruction set thinking" process perpetrated by those on the marketing high ground. In other words, those with tax dollars to make up and buy symbols.
Is this bad or dangerous? I'm not aware of any laws against "Impersonating a fictitious organization..."
Or, is it a quiet and subtle use of programmed acceptance of authority to exercise a slightly higher level of personal freedom?
The teacher needs to think on this one for a while...uppity student and all.
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