Relativity

On my way into the office this morning I was stuck rolling (at a Los Angeles-esque three miles-per-hour) behind a Toyota Lexus SUV.  After snapping out of my Green Day induced trance (yes, my iPod has a flux capacitor set to 1997) I managed to become aware of the lone Bumper sticker on said Lexus:

"My child was student of the month in Mrs. X's 5th grade class at Low Expectations Elementary"

Seriously?  This is what we've come to?  Now, given the mosaic theory, I can compile a few key facts and draw a reasonable conclusion:

a) I live in Santa Monica
b) I work in west Los Angeles, just south of Hollywood
c) The Toyota Lexus
d) They were also coming from Santa Monica

From that I can deduce that the next Norman Einstein doesn't attend an overcrowded inner-city school with fifty-five classmates.  In fact, he probably goes to one of the many prep schools in the area that likely have class sizes in the mid-twenties at most.  I know there are only nine months in a school year but come on, we're handing out "best" awards to 33% of kids now?  Name a single pursuit in life that has a 33% rate of notable over-achievement?  there isn't anything that is even close.  The only things that even have 33% or higher success rates are the binary ones or instances wehre the mean, maximum and minimum are so close that everyone just hovers around the average (think of an important example, like the amount of time anyone over the age of 13 can listen to a Miley Cyrus song... answer:  43 second average, 44 second maximum, 39 second minimum).

Last time I checked, success in fifth grade essentially meant being able to resist the urge to talk to your BFF (who you had invested three hours of orchestration that Patton would have been proud of, in order to sit next to) while the teacher was talking.  I'm just saying.

I would like to think to myself that this phenomenon is specific to LA and will thus be awarding it one more point in it's effort to crush my soul.  If I ever get the chance to raise an I Heart Palindromes Jr. and he brings home something like this I will do what Uncle #3 of 5 did when presented with a horrendously large art project (made mostly of plywood and glitter, from what I could tell) that his daughter won an "award" for.  He looked at it, told her he was proud, and then put it in the dumpster behind the school when she wasn't looking.  He certainly didn't take pictures of it and plaster it on the back of his car.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking.  I'm sure I'll end up tempering.  Boondock could always do that, but not enough to condone a student of the month bumper sticker.  Ever. 

Los Angeles: 5,383 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0

-I Heart Palindromes