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6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling

by Staff

CARPENTERSVILLE, IL—Local first-grader Connor
Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a
coming lifetime of existential dread Monday
upon recognizing his cruel destiny to
participate in compulsory education for the
better part of the next two decades, sources
reported.

"I don't want to go to school," Bolduc told his
parents, the crushing reality of his situation
having yet to fully dawn on his naïve
consciousness. "I want to play outside with my
friends."

While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick
him up on his first day of elementary school,
his parents reportedly were able to "see the
wheels turning in his little brain" as the
child, for the first time in his life, began to
understand how dire and hopeless his situation
had actually become.

Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet
to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number
of years before he will be released from the
horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more
than twice the length of time he has yet
existed. According to a conservative estimate
of six hours of school five days a week for
nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an
estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless
succession of nearly identical, suffocating
classrooms.

This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario
does not take into account additional time
spent on homework, extracurricular
responsibilities, or college, sources said.

"I can't wait until school is over," said the
3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have
been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount
of time between now and summer, let alone the
years and years of tedium to follow.

The concept of wasting a majority of daylight
hours sitting still in a classroom when he
could be riding his bicycle, playing in his
tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at
bugs—especially considering that he had already
wasted two years of his life attending
preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly
unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he
had no idea how much worse the inescapable
truth will turn out to be.

Shortly after his mommy, homemaker Ellen
Bolduc, 31, assured him that he would be able
to resume playtime "when school lets out,"
Connor's innocent brain only then began to work
out the implication of that sentence to its
inevitable, soul-crushing conclusion.

When pressed for more detail on the exact
timing of that event, Mrs. Bolduc would only
reply "soon." At that point, the normally
energetic child grew quiet before asking a
follow-up question, "After [younger sister]
Maddy's birthday?" thereby setting the stage
for the first of thousands of rushing
realizations he will be forced to come to grips
with over the course of his subsequent
existence.

Madison Ellen Bolduc was born on Sept. 28.

After learning that the first grade will
continue for eight excruciating months beyond
that date, it was only a matter of time before
Bolduc inquired into what grade comes after
first grade, and, when told, would probe
further into how many grades he will have to
complete before allowed to play with his
friends.

The answer to that fatal question—12, a number
too large for Bolduc to count on the fingers of
both hands—will be enough to nearly shatter the
boy's still-forming psyche, said child
psychology expert Eli Wasserbaum.

"When you consider that it doesn't include
another four years of secondary education, plus
five more years of medical school, if he wants
to follow his previously stated goal to grow up
to be a doctor like his daddy, this will come
as an interminably deep chasm of drudgery and
imprisonment to [Connor]," said Wasserbaum.
"It's difficult to know the effect on his
psychological well-being when he grasps the
full truth: that his education will be followed
by approximately four decades of work, bills,
and taxes, during which he will also rear his
own children to face the same fate, all of
which will, of course, be followed by a brief,
almost inconsequential retirement, and his
inevitable death."

"Even a 50-year-old adult would have trouble
processing such a monstrous notion," Wasserbaum
added. "Oh my God, I'm 50 years old."

The first of Bolduc's remaining 2,299 days of
school will resume at 8 a.m. tomorrow. On the
next 624 Sundays, he will also be forced to
attend church.

— staff
The Onion
2008-08-15


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