Surveillance

Playing by the rules

Watch your kids’ every move lest they try the same shit you tried when you were their ages

BILL BIGGNOZE, HIGH SCHOOL GUIDANCE COUNSELOR, lectured every student who passed through his door on the evils of drugs, especially marijuana, the gateway drug to the evils of addiction. No other drug was more accessible, easier to use, and more enticing than the devil’s weed, which was why he knew which students imbibed (all of them), and which didn’t, which would be Poindexter Dweeb and Arabella Duhl.

Why couldn’t teens live responsibly like him when he was a teenager? His peers had keggers, stole their parents’ liquor and had sex in their parents’ bedrooms when they were out of town. They didn’t buy drugs from street corners and engage in unprotected bisexual beastiality at raves.

When he shared his suspicions, his certainty, with principal Pinnstikker, she laughed in his face. “Maybe you should buy a bottle of CBD oil and chill.” Just as Bill suspected, Pinnstikker was a druggie, too. As were the teachers who mocked him in the teachers’ lounge.

Like the time he suggested they install video cams in the bathroom stalls to catch the students smoking dope. No one took his side. Caroline Upnose, the radical feminist social studies teacher, shouted at him like he was a rapist. “And who’s going to check the girls’ bathroom? You?” Which he planned to. He couldn’t trust the women teachers to do it. They’d just take the girls’ sides.