Fire? Or Just an Excuse?

There are some things that every kid learns in school, it seems. Or at least teaching is attempted, they may have just skipped class that day. But every kid is taught things like "2+2=4", the government has three branches (sounds like an unhealthy tree to me), and the capital of Montana is the 'M'. But one thing that is taught, not just once but over and over and over again is "Stop. Drop. And Roll".

I wonder, though, how many kids caught fire and tried to put it out by jumping into the pool or actually (*gasp*) removing their clothes before it was deemed necessary that everyone should know the one true and proper way to put out the fire is to stop, drop, and roll. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be taught, or that there are better ways of taking care of this obvious deficiency in the human facination with burning things, I'm just wondering how many people had to show this to be important before we started to have it added to the collective conciousness.

It could have been that there was a freak accident in some town, where all of the children came home one day soaking wet and when their parents asked them why they said that they all got struck by lightning which set their clothes on fire so they had to jump into the lake, and could they help it that once they were already there they might as well play around? Or maybe there were too many people caught with sufficiently much clothing missing, whom when questioned responded that they had to remove their clothing because it started to spontaneously combust and they couldn't help it that both of them had to remove their clothes at the same time, could they?

So maybe all these parents decided that they had to get rid of this silly excuse, they had to be lied to convincingly if they were going to be lied to at all. Maybe these parents banded together and came up with a way to remove the fire without removing clothing, without getting wet.

Or maybe there's a teacher out there somewhere that woke up late one morning and realized that the lesson for the day had yet to be planned, and now all teachers continue the tradition, giving themselves a secret holiday every year as their students spend the whole time learning to stop, drop and roll.

But, hey, if that's the reason, they deserve it. It's a tough job. I just think that they should make it a known holiday so they don't even have to come in. I think we need a national "Stop, Drop, and Roll" day!