The Lord Roars From Zion
I am frightened by Greta Thunberg. For good reason, I think. My fear is a rational one, but I am predisposed to picking up what she is laying down, man. I know why her words have me looking inward. The gyres are turning. A big change is going to come. We have written the poems of innocence, it’s time to look at the other side of the page.
One reason why you won’t find me mocking Greta along with the morons and idiots on Fox News is that I spend my days with twelve-year-old girls. I’ve been teaching them, and other twelve-year-olds, for about two decades. I often say that if I could have an army of twelve-year-old girls I would rule the world. They are the most industrious and competent creatures on earth, provided you show them what to do. You may not believe me. You may be skeptical. I could talk about this idea for a long time, but I’m not going to because it will make for a crappy blog post. You will want to argue (my guess is that you are confabulating thirteen-year-old girls with twelve-year-old girls) and I’ll have to concede that this particular age has many downsides (don’t they all?), but if you came to my house and I could explain my ideas to you over beer and pasta, you would be convinced. You would leave my house with a new-found admiration for this particular phase of human development. You would start to see twelve-year-old girls as I do… as the monarch caterpillars of human pupahood.
The second reason I am open to Greta Thunberg is that I’ve spent a lot of time, and argued with, a lot of kids “on the spectrum”. I think Greta has self-identified as having Asperger’s Syndrome, so I’m not diagnosing her based on some youtube video. Professionally, I’ve been working with such kids since 1988, which, I think, was before we used the term “spectrum”… because I’ve been working with kids since 1988. It’s my belief that these kids have always been there and it’s just how we relate to them that changes, which, by the way, is also my take on LGBTQ kids. And like LGBTQ kids, and kids in general, every one of them is different, so I realize that I’m clumping poor Greta in with the American kids that I have known when I go on to make my stupid point, but my stupid point is this: these kids are seldom wrong. I mean, you might be trying to tell them that it’s not…
