There are 'anti-huggers' among us

Saw three sixth-grade boys walking away from a school last Friday. They were obviously a carefree trio, arms draped around each others' shoulders. All were enjoying a jaw breaker-type lollipop which made their cheeks bulge, and they were laughing over some specially shared joke.

The days of youth are best when carefree… free of the responsibilities that come so soon with adult life. Watching those three kids brought back thoughts of my younger days. Had good friends like that. Thank goodness, so did my kids and grandkids. Thinking about it made me feel warm and good.

That emotion passed in a flash when I recalled an almost nightmarish story earlier in the week regarding a school back east. A junior high girl was reprimanded and put on detention for putting her arm around her girlfriend's shoulder and giving her a little hug as they were saying good-bye. The school superintendent defended the action, saying the rule against "public displays of emotion" was a good one and the girl had violated school regulations meant for protection of all students' rights.

For some reason, I didn't cut that story from the paper and do not recall in what town this rule exists. Maybe it's for the best, because it might make most of us sick to learn how many places around the U.S. these days are passing and enforcing such paranoid anti-human rules.

I recall a couple of years back when a 6-year-old boy was kicked out of school for kissing a little girl. In whatever town that happened, such action was considered a manifestation of sexual harassment, regardless of the age of the perpetrator. At the time of that unbelievable news story I thought about the Salem witch hunts of early New England days. Also recalled my first-grade experience at Camas Prairie when with what some modern educators would view as "great lust and evil intentions," I kissed a brown-curled second-grade girl on the cheek… on the playground.

The results were quite different 73 years ago from what they would be in those "modern" eastern schools; the little girl beat me up and put some dirt in my mouth. In self defense, let me remind you that there was a poem little kids loved to tease me with in those days long ago. The irritating words were: Georgie Porgie, puddin' and pie. Kissed the girls and made them cry. When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away."

Can't remember for sure now, but it is possible I kissed that girl because she was among those who used to sing that little ditty. Or! It could have been because she seemed to be a kind and friendly person; however, in my memories album, I prefer to think it was because she was irresistibly alluring and seductively beautiful.

Wouldn't it be awful if those modern schools are on the right track?

G. George Ostrom is the news director of KOFI radio and a Hungry Horse News columnist.