Daily Archives: October 14, 2009

“When his­tory calls, his­tory calls,” said Maine Repub­li­can Olympia Snowe.

One of the more obscure haz­ards of mod­ern life — obscure, that is, until it hap­pens to you — is the ten­dency of ordi­nary peo­ple to say extra­or­di­nar­ily idi­otic things when a reporter sud­denly mate­ri­al­izes in front of them, espe­cially if one lives in small towns where not much ever happens.

They know just about every­one.  They might speak at a coun­cil meet­ing about a new stop light or where a land­fill is going to be located and nobody much notices.  And even if they should get drunk at their nephew Timmy’s wed­ding and propo­si­tion the caterer noth­ing much ever comes of it.

And then, one day, just to give a quote to a reporter,  they say some­thing that seems sen­si­ble at the moment but when seen in print seems one of the dumber things ever to pass across human lips and it ends up in The New York Times as part of its story about the six-year-old des­per­ado who was so proud of being a Cub Scout he brought his camp­ing tool to school and ended up doing the grade school equiv­a­lent of hard time.

“There is no par­ent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good see­ing eyes because there was a scuf­fle and some­one pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the pres­i­dent of the Christina district’s school board.

If I had to guess (and I do, and I am) I would say that by now George has been informed of  the hun­dreds of items avail­able in a school — things like pen­cils, rulers, com­passes, paper clips, the snaggle-tooth charm his friend wears — that are capa­ble of injur­ing an eye.  By every one he meets.  By now he prob­a­bly knows them by heart.

The child’s mother was savvy enough to see what was loom­ing on the hori­zon: “We didn’t want our son becom­ing the poster child for this,” Ms. Christie said, “but this is out of control.”

Even his town is pre­tend­ing it doesn’t know him.

The City of Newark has no juris­dic­tion over the Christina School Dis­trict. Please con­tact the Christina Board of Edu­ca­tion if you would like to com­ment on their deci­sion regard­ing Zachary Christie.

So — George — have you stopped beat­ing your wife?