Give Me a Break (from studying)

Hey, kids, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s all read the same inane book at the same time! Wow! Great! I’ll bet we can set a WORLD RECORD! Won’t that be neato? Wow!

This may be the dumbest idea I’ve heard all week – and bear in mind, I just started law school, so I’ve already been plied with several legal cases worth of people who acted on inordinately dumb ideas.

The Little Engine That Could? Who came up with that one? – Bill Bennett, I’ll bet. For the record, my kids prefer Scooby Doo and the Army of the Undead. Yeah, I know it’s just a tie-in to an out-of-date video release. I’ll bet it could break the Little Engine’s record without breaking a sweat.

Oh, but wait – this is kind of nice… one can go online and donate a copy of Jumpstart’s custom limited edition of The Little Engine That Could to a child in need! I’m sure there are a lot of kids with no health insurance whose lives would really be changed by a story of a good little locomotive who pulls himself up by his bootstraps and succeeds through the power of positive thinking. …but what’s this? The link is sponsored by Penguin USA. Hmm. So who publishes this custom limited edition? … nah, couldn’t be...

I have a better idea for setting a world record: let’s take the people who thought up “No Child Left Behind” and see if we can stuff them all into a phone booth.