THe Weekly Screed (#625)

A school prayer — for real school
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — On Patriot’s Day in Boston, we added four more victims to the millions who’ve been killed in the name of God — at least according to commentators who are convinced that the killers were militant Muslims.

Curiously, it’s the position of many religious conservatives — Mike Huckabee foremost among them — that religious faith has powers to reduce man’s violence against his fellow man. They say this despite religion’s historical body count — which includes such bloodsoaked lowlights as the Childrens Crusade, the Inquisition, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the Magdalene Laundries, the Final Solution, the charming Muslim tradition of “honor killings,” and Sister Mary Ann regularly using a razor-sharp ruler to whale on Dick Kozarek every day in 7th grade at St. Mary’s School. I could go on all day.

Despite religion’s sorry, sanguinary record, Huckabee insists that, if we force kids to pray in school (mainly to Jesus, who was tortured, dragged through the streets and nailed to a cross in the name of God), America would be a kinder, gentler society, with nary a mass shooting anywhere, even in Texas.

In a way, I agree with Mike. Praying might not help, but it couldn’t hurt. However, if we’re going to have compulsory (multi-sectarian) school prayer, let’s try it out first in high school, where kids really need the intervention of a Supreme Being to help them through those four years of hell.

Here’s a draft:

“Oh, dear God! (or Allah, Vishnu, Mithras, Elvis, L. Ron Hubbard, whoever)
“Please let me get to my locker today without meeting Bubba (or Buck, Killer, Big Tiny — insert relevant name here), the sadistic son of a bitch with the nextdoor locker who always says ‘Who you lookin’ at?’ even when I’m not looking, and then ‘teaches me a lesson’ by grinding my face — every day — into the locker,

“Deliver me from pop quizzes, especially in subjects I didn’t study last night, especially in the morning when my eyes are still gooey and I’m barely awake, and I’m recovering from Bubba’s daily beating,

“And oh, Lord, please spare me from irregular French verbs,

“And grant me four years without oral presentations, and, for that matter, book reports — especially on Moby Dick, Great Expectations, Silas Marner and Go Ask Alice; also, lab notebooks, roundworm dissections, topic sentences, footnotes, mitosis, osmosis, the President’s Physical Fitness tests, the “survival float,’ term papers, blue books, algebra, syllogisms and detention,

“And please, if I encounter that cute wavy-haired/strawberry blonde, gorgeous/hunky cheerleader/quarterback in the halls, please let it not happen right after phy-ed, and let me be neither tongue-tied nor red-faced, nor suddenly stricken with baggy nylons, a humongous pimple festering on my nose, my fly open, foodstains on my bodice, or having the worst hair day of my life,

“And oh, God! Deliver me a doctor’s note exempting me forever from gym class, and if this is not possible, spare me at least from a gym teacher named ‘Coach” or ‘Butch’ or ‘Big Bertha’ who thinks every period of physical education should feel like six weeks at Camp LeJeune, and OK, if that’s not possible, please just let me skip the horror-show in the shower room, and if you can’t do even that much, for God’s sake, then at least deliver me — while I’m helplessly naked — from a plague of towel-snapping jocks and sniggering finger-pointers,

“For that matter, Lord, spare me, through all my high-school days, from noogies, and wedgies, ear-flicks, Indian burns, wet willies and other forms of asinine teenage torture,

“And let my passion for computers, or ornithology, philosophy or dinosaurs render me neither geek, dork nor nerd, nor any other high-school subspecies that marks me as a sexless nebbish and arrests my social development for perhaps — God help me — the rest of my warped and lonely life (at home, with Mom),

“And please, keep me forever out of Mr./Ms. (name of vice-principal)’s office, and spare me the guidance of my guidance counselor, and let me not be seduced into the Band, nor fall in amongst the dopes and dopers, nor consort with the Chess Nuts, nor join the AV club — and God save me from the God Squad,

“Lord, make my every trip into the cafeteria invisible to all, delivering me thus from the catcalls, flying foodstuffs and tripping feet of my tormenting peers, and allow me to be not sickened by the brown lettuce in the salad bar, nor by the mystery meat in Monday’s burgers, nor by the bluish lumps growing on the Jell-O,

“And if I should chance upon a school dance, dear Lord, please don’t let my feets fail me, lest I spend my whole high school career in cruel mimicry, ridicule and ostracism,

“Oh, Jesus Christ, just once before I graduate (if I graduate), please, please, please, a date for prom — please!,

“Also, God, visit upon me a lengthy but neither fatal nor disfiguring disease during the full span of preparation for those useless multiple-choice standardized tests that waste my time and squander the talent of my favorite teachers,

“Please, Lord, spare me, my school, my teachers, my friends, my community and my nation from Racing to a mythical ‘Top’ that won’t be there when we arrive,

“And if I am the Child Left Behind, then, dear Lord, so be it — no big deal,

“But, please, I only ask that if you can manage it — please — leave me behind in the green grass behind the stadium with the brown-eyed girl/boy I fell in love with over Petri dishes and dead frogs in freshman biology,
“For thine is the curriculum, and the homeroom and the diploma — forever.

“Amen.”