Johnny Dearest,
I feel like perhaps I’ve been watching too much Jordan Peterson lately. It started when I refused to use the preferred pronouns of my second-grade teacher Mrs. Queequeg, who outed itself to the class as a queer non-binary gender fluid enviro-metro sexual. I don’t even know what pronouns are so I said “No way! I’m not doing it, and that’s that ok?” She accused me of being a sexist member of the patriarchy and claimed that my whiteness inferred privilege. To which I responded:
“I believe you mean confer, which is to bestow, whereas infer is an intransitive verb used synonymously with imply, which you might want to brush up on if you’re going to be teaching us English. As for privilege, do you mean like the privilege of dying at a higher rate at the hands of police? Or perhaps you’re referring to the privilege of not living as long as women, assuming you still know what one is for Pete’s sake!”
Johnny, I don’t even know what sex means, but I wasn’t about to tell it that and give it the ammunition to cancel me over its perceived moral turpitude on my part. So, of course, I was sent to Principal Juestine’s office where he proceeded to read me the riot act, in French no less, accusing me of abusing my standing as a Canadian to cause harm to my illegal immigrant teacher.
So I asked,
“What bloody harm can I possibly cause as a second grader – I don’t even know what pronouns are let alone what that thing is if it’s not a she?!”
He wasn’t having any of that and told me I owed it an apology for being insensitive and putting its life at risk with my hate speech.
“Hate speech? You call that hate speech?!? I don’t have an ounce of hate in my body for Mrs. Queequeg…”
“Their name is Kurtina.”
“Ok, I suppose, Kurtina then. I don’t have an ounce of hate in my body for Mrs. Kurtina. Now you might say I don’t feel the same way about math or spelling, which of course studies show all second graders hate with a passion, including this kid right here, the evidence is clear. I can accept that. I’m like two standard deviations more hateful toward math than most, alright? Especially Shrimsha Pardeep who can already do trigonometry in third grade, I’m not sure how you explain that. However you can’t lob these accusations against me over some lady’s name choices, that’s absurd!”
He asked me how much Jordan Peterson I’d been watching and I told him
“Quite a lot actually, he’s one of the only sane educators left on the planet.”
He nodded disapprovingly and told me I was watching too much. What do you think Johnny?
Signed,
Little Jordan P.
Dear Little Jordan P.,
When is the last time you cleaned your room?
-Johnny
