...continued

Reality, Now Politics, and Stealing

One day I was reading.  It was some home school material and I heard my father and mother talking about how much some of the material was going to cost.  I asked, "Is it really that much?"  To which I received the answer, "Yes, it is".  The books and material for the first semester were going to be a solid bit of cash.  I forget the exact amount but it left us a little short after paying for my brother and for my school materials.  We'd make do, but it was somewhat unsettling.  I asked a question that has and always will burn, "Hey dad, how do the schools get money?"  Which I followed up with, "Schools have to pay for buildings and teachers and the materials, but we never really paid them."  He replied with the obvious answer, "Those materials, the teachers, and everything else are paid for out of taxes."  I asked, "Well why do you pay for taxes if you don't use the schools for us?"  Heaven forbid I apply some logic here, heaven forbid I thought we might receive some type of break, maybe a tax break, for them to provide my brother and I an education.  He replied again, "We don't get anything back, we still have to pay the full amount for the schools."  I just replied with a dejected and somewhat confused, "Oh".

Again, as with anything that didn't make sense I thought about it more over time.  I thought, how could this be?  Even if other kids can't afford this, it's still like they're just taking the money from my father and mother.  They aren't asking, they didn't ask, my parents didn't get a vote on this, they just have to pay.  I did another thing that moment and went to find a dictionary.  After fumbling through the closet were some of these books were stored I stumbled upon a dictionary.  Merriam-Webster I assumed would be fine.  I looked for the word that had come to mind.  I found the S and kept looking for the next letter T.  There the word was, and I read the definition;

Stealing : to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.

I was left aghast and amazed.  How could this be in America, were we are free that we allow something like this.  The honest definition of this process was exactly what was happening.  There was no question about it, there was the definition.  I pondered, how could this be, it is against the law to steal.  How is the school allowed to collect taxes by stealing when it is against the law.  I didn't realize the school was operated by the Government yet.  I didn't know what was run by the Government.  All I knew was we the American people were free, or supposed to be.  But here was something that removed our family's freedom to have me taught at home by my parents.  Something that, especially now, I know was the best thing for me.  We were going to have a hard few months to make sure everything worked, but we were going to do it.  I was also set on it, I didn't want to go back to the High School or any of the schools in the area.

So I moved forward in life, absolutely confused and pissed off at this injustice.  Again, leveled squarely at myself and my family.  We were poorer for trying to do something and to provide something better for ourselves, for me, and for my brother.  With this reality, the injustice of daily life, of trying to gain an education, and learning that the school were allowed to steal left me in a strangely odd place.  I knew one thing though, my friends and I had discovered one thing that resonated loudly and clearly to us.  It didn't leave us with ironies and oxymoron.  This new thing we had found almost by accident didn't leave questions without answers or bore us with the drivel of the adults in our surrounding world.  This new thing left us hungry for more.

To be continued...