Rant on.

 

It never fails to astound me how sad and selfish some people’s behavior can be.  There’s an elementary school in Florida where parents are protesting one first grader’s attendance–going so far as to picket the school–all because the girl has a severe peanut allergy.  They want to deny the girl with this allergy public schooling because their children are now being required to–prepare yourself, this is a little shocking–be a little cleaner.

 

I am not kidding.  The kids at this school are being required to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths twice a day.  That is the extent of the accommodation.  It’s apparently too much trouble for some parents, though, and they are demanding the girl be home schooled or go somewhere else for her elementary education.

 

Seriously, people, are you really that selfish?  Your children should be washing their hands and face regularly, anyway.  All this girl’s presence has done is force the issue.  One parent went so far as to say, “If I had a daughter who had a problem, I would not ask everyone else to change their lives to fit my life.”  If washing one’s hands and rinsing one’s mouth on a regular basis constitutes a lifestyle change, I think you need to take a hard look at your lifestyle.

 

And yet this is not an isolate incident.  Many years ago there was a young man named Ryan White.  You may remember the controversy:  He had AIDS, and the school he was in didn’t want him there.  The parents of the middle school he first attended felt certain he would transmit his illness to their kids in spite of doctors’ assurance this could not happen  Their concern was severely misplaced, and he died without giving anyone else his disease.  The pressure at his first school got very bad.  Somebody fired a gunshot through his home’s living room window, in fact.  So his family moved to a new school, where he was welcomed with open arms.

 

This, I suppose, is the way things have always been.  One area will be selfish and uncaring about one’s welfare or feelings, but another will welcome the disaffected with warm hearts.  The former is just sickening to me, especially at the grade school level.  These parents are teaching their children an awful lesson, that it’s okay to push away somebody with a medical problem rather than trying to help them out.

 

Pun intended, that’s a nuttiness we don’t need.

 

Rant off.