How My Childhood Got Poohed On

Say no to the Pooh

I like bears. This fascination most likely stems from my obsession with the Werner Herzog documentary “Grizzly Man” which I’ve seen more times than I can count. My fantasy football team is the Sheboygan Grizzly Men. I have used bears as unit of physical strength measurement before. For example: A bear has one “Bear” of strength, A T-rex would have like 15 “Bears” of strength, Batman would have like six “Bears”, and so on. Bears are something that I enjoy talking about and enjoy learning about for strange reasons. There is one bear however who I do not approve of. This bear stole part of my childhood, part that I will never get to experience again. He and his band of animals with personality disorders destroyed something that created some of my oldest fond memories.

This year for spring break I’m heading to Disney world with some friends. This will mark my first return to the most magical place on earth since 2001 when I was in fourth grade. Before that I had been there once before. I was very young, probably four or five years old. I remember this trip to Disney world probably more than the rest of that year of my life. Specifically I remember spending lots of time with my dad.

I am the youngest of four children and on that trip to Disney world I was too short to ride most of the rides.  My Dad, who couldn’t ride most of the rides because he has problems with motion sickness would stay with me and we’d go to other attractions. The most memorable instance of this was when the rest of our family went on the “Space Mountain” roller coaster. My dad and I found a ride that I was tall enough to ride in “Mr. Toad’s wild ride”. This ride, to the four or five year old Jeremy was the greatest thing on the planet. I remember riding it 3 times while waiting for my siblings and my mom to get through the line and ride “space mountain” just once. I’m pretty sure we went and rode “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at least one more time while waiting for the rest of the family a different time.

Fast forward to 2001 when I returned to the Mecca of childhood dreams. While searching for the same ride that captivated my young heart. I came across the spot that it should have been only to find it missing. In its place was a Giant stupid bear with a red t-shirt and no pants staring back at me. “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” was replaced with “Winnie The Pooh’s Honey Pot Adventures”. This is inexcusable. This is why I hate that bear. I have since boycotted all Winnie The Pooh related things.

I have really never spent a lot of time with any donkeys but if I ever meet one he better be nothing far from spritely, I won’t have anything to do with him if he even resembles that sad sack of a donkey who is friends with Winnie. This may make any sort of grand canyon trip a little more difficult but  I can live with that so long as I am in no way showing compassion towards anything related to that fuzzy bear.

If I hear Kenny Loggins I better be taking the highway to the danger zone, cutting a few feet loose, or possibly learning about how my parents can’t do musically related things, because if I hear “Return to Pooh Corner”: See ya later Kenny. “Count all the bees in the hive?!” Really Mr. Loggins? Hey kids, found a bee hive? Why don’t you get close enough to count them. Not to mention that any other song featuring the words “Back to the days of Pooh” would seem really gross.

Many people in Sheboygan might know of the pooh bear that is high in a tree across Taylor drive from festival foods. It has been stuck up there since I can remember and last time I paid attention it still was. I sadly was not the person who marooned the bear in the tree but seeing him in his weathered state gives me hope that one day, he will fall from his tree and be ripped to pieces by raccoons or something.

I urge all who read this to join me in this boycott. How long will it be before your favorite theme park ride is taken over by an animal who wears a shirt but has not the decency to wear a pair of pants. It’s the right thing to do.

Dear classmates,

To quote one of my favorite series of online videos “What are you doing? What, what. What are you doing?” I have always wanted to voice some complaints about some of the brilliant students with whom I attend class. So I’m going to. There have been many people who I’ve shared a class with who have been distracting, disrespectful, and just plain dumb. These individuals make me worried that our standards for who we let into higher education are too low.

I will start with a gentleman who I’ve had the pleasure of having a few classes with already. We’ll call him “Restroom Jones.” Now Restroom Jones shows up for classes about 60% of the time. When he does grace the class with his presence however he takes a five minute bathroom break during the middle of a lecture. This is every time we have class!? Now I understand having a schedule to do your business, that’s all fine and good. That however, cannot be the case with Mr. Jones due to the following evidence. During one class period he left the room twice for five minutes apiece, and I’ve seen him do this in consecutive classes that are just an hour apart. Unless Restroom Jones has a severe case of irritable bowel syndrome, it is clear to me that he thinks so little of the person behind the podium who has a Ph. D that he feels he does not need their assistance in passing the class.

My next case is another gentleman who was a lab partner of mine for a science coarse, we’ll call this upstanding student “Ipod McLaptop.” Now, Mr. McLaptop went to a prestigious school out of state last year and made a point to tell everyone around him. He talked about the great parties that he went to and all the classes that he would skip there. All this, along with talking about how smart of a guy he was. I mean that’s how he got into POSU “Prestigious Out of state University” (I know that could stand for something else, I’ll let you decide) last year. Unfortunately for Mr. McLaptop due to the quantity of aforementioned skipping and partying he failed out of his old school and ended up back here. Now he shows up to most of his classes, however when he does he constantly plays games and texts friends on his iphone. During lecture and lab, Mr. McLaptop can be seen with one ear-bud in his ear at all times. If you sit close enough to him, you can hear the bass from his music, When he is not texting his friends, he can almost surely be found surfing facebook on his laptop without any attempt to pretend that he is paying attention. Tapping away at his keyboard when no one is even lecturing.

These are people who may have had the high school GPA’s to get into higher learning, but that does not make them acceptable student material. It’s people like this that should be removed and have their tuition used for the people who could not afford tuition but are willing to put forth an effort to respect the instructors and the learning process.