What a rip off!

Z-rockers

Whats the most exciteing thing that has ever happened to you? Around the holidays I always think about the little boy in the movie "A Christmas Story" who couldn't wait to get the de-coder from the jar of Ovaltine to find out what the secret message was only to find it spelled out drink your ovaltine (what a let down)! Things happen to us when we are children that we NEVER forget whether they are good or bad we don't forget them, Ralfie (from the movie) was so happy to get that de-coder in the mail only to be let down.

I will NEVER forget being 9 years old and in the 4th grade, our assignment was to write a letter to the president about something that concerned us and then the teacher was going actually send them to him! This was my chance to talk to the president! What ever would I say? I thought long and hard about what concerned me the most about the world. Weeks earlier Mrs.Porter my 4th grade teacher had taught us about Sweat Shops overseas and how kids our age where working 20 hour days getting only .10 cents making jeans to send over to America! That was it, I would ask the president to help those poor children working like dogs overseas in sweat shops!

My hand couldn't write the words down on my paper fast enough. I wrote about my concerns and how I thought he could help them out and how I would do ANYTHING I could to assist in rescueing these sweat shop working children! Finally I was done and my teacher came around and collected our envelopes and put stamps on them and sent them to Washington, my letter was on its way to make a difference! The teacher told us that it would take the president a while to read all of them and send us a response so we had to be patient.

Weeks passed and slowly but surly some of the other kids in my class were getting responses to their letters! Some kids just wrote the president with a quesiton like, "Do you like being president?" and "What's it like to live in the White House?" so their letters were easier to respond to rather than my letter which requested somehting as big as saving kids from sweat shops!

I waited what seemed like an enternity! All the kids in my class had gotten their letters back but me. Then one day during lunch my teacher brought me an envelope address to me from the president! OH MY GOSH! It was here my response, all those kids were going to be saved from sweat shops all because of MY letter! I opened the letter as fast as my nine year old hands would let me! I wanted to jump up and down with delight, I thought I have to get on the intercom and read this to the WHOLE school!

Good thing I didn't. The president (or better yet one of the presidents many, many, secretaries) had sent me a letter thanking me for my concern about POLLUTION! POLLUTION I thought, that wasn't what my letter was about! He didn't even read my letter, nobody did, they just took a stab in the dark that my letter was about pollution and sent me a stupid generic response letter! What a rip off! It turned me against pollitics forver!

I still haven't been able to save the poor kids in Sweat Shops!

Until Next Time, Be Safe, Have Fun, listen to Z-Rock, Love Ya

God Bless
-Tia Maria