From: shellyr@bridge.net Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 17:43:29 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: Farmer ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts OUTTA THE MOUTHS OF BABES. You have to read this. The whole thing. All the way to the end. Promise me. ----------------------------------- >>>>>>FUROR ERUPTS IN BRIGHAM CITY SCHOOLS<<<<<< A.P. (Brigham city, Utah) -- The Brigham City School Board met in an emergency session yesterday with the city council to consider allegations that the school district's youngest charges were being inculcated with a pro-gay ideology. The issue arose after parents complained that children in the kindergarten class at Brigham Elementary were being led in a game which mimicked same-sex marriages. At issue was the game "The Farmer in the Dell." Renee Mott, the accused kindergarten teacher, explained: "The class is over-balanced with girls. I mean, we have lots more girls than boys. Sometimes it just happens that way, it's just chance. So when we play "Farmer in the Dell, sometimes I let a girl go first, so that everybody gets a turn." The problem arises with the next line of the children's song: "the farmer takes a wife." The girl-farmer would often choose another little girl to join her in the circle as the "farmer's wife." "This is just setting a bad example to our young and impressionable children," said Jared Day, whose child is in the class. "If you don't stand up for family values, this country is going to go right down the toilet." "I know these things may happen in other places," said Janabell Millett. "But this is Brigham City. We can't let that kind of pollution into our town. And into the kindergarten, no less!" The extent of the furor over this issue can be gauged by the number of citizens who got involved -- more than just the parents of students in the class. At the extraordinary joint session of the School Board and city council, over 200 parents and others showed up. Petitions were submitted with hundreds of names. "Somebody told us about this in Relief Society last Sunday," said Filene Dunnbody, referring to the Mormon women's weekly church meeting. "We started the petition right then and there. We just knew we had to take action; we were all so mad about those poor little children. After we got everyone in Relief Society to sign, we took it over to the men's quorums and they were glad to sign on too. Even some of the youth signed." It was rumored that Mormon churches in neighboring towns were gearing up to bus in hundreds more parents to the next School Board meeting, should the issue not find an immediate resolution. Parents in Brigham City organized an action committee, and stated they will sue the school board and the kindergarten teacher personally for psychic damage to their children. They asked a BYU Law School professor to represent them, and have drafted a law for the State legislature which would ban play acting of same-sex marriage in public schools. When teacher Renee Mott testified to the combined school board and town council that the situation had come about entirely innocently, her explanation was met with pronounced skepticism. "I just wanted all the children to have a turn," she concluded, visibly shaken. "I don't care how 'innocent' this thing started," responded LeClare Moffatt, speaking for the combined council. "If not all the students get a turn, that's just too bad. There are more important issues at stake." "The farmer has to be a boy," concurred Mayor Tom Merrill. "A boy gets picked first. That's the way we always played the game, and that's the way it should be played." The extraordinary joint session of parents and school board (reached) a tentative solution. Regardless of class sex ratios, boys would be picked first. However, in the interests of fairness, the position of "The Cheese" would be reserved for a girl. At the end of the game, the children sing "the Cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone. Hi ho the dairy-O, the cheese stands alone." "That should be enough to make anyone happy," concluded school board president Jack Peterson. C. K. Woodworth, A.P. remote correspondent - END-(edited slightly only for length-sr.) ------------------------------ Good for you. You did it. Read it all the way to the end without having to go get snacks. Did it make you furious? Ready to whack a Christian? Relax. IT'S A HOAX. Even fooled the Associated Press. It was done by some graduate student with too much time, not enough money for cigarettes, and a friend from the land of duh who posted it to the Internet, where only Rosie O' Donnell rumors spread faster. If you believed it, you aren't alone. Thousands of jaws dropped. So what's the finding in this fable? That the self-proclaimed super-religionist have tilled this bed till we're ready to harvest any kind of crop they seem to have grown, even if it's an hallucination? Or, since we know they are capable of making up so many other outrageous stories when our names are mentioned, then why not this one? Okay. Or internalize a lesson of your own. Don't you, sometimes, a little, miss the good old days when they had commies to chase so this would have been less believable Me too. ________________________ (C) 1997. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. May be commercially reprinted only in its entirety with written permission. Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, and the author of the new Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Break Ups. (Spinsters Ink.)