I Am Better Than Your Kids Read online

The bad news is that you can’t become a teacher because you can’t spell.

  The good news is that McDonald’s can look forward to hiring you when you’re sixteen. But only for nine months, until you go into labor.

  F

  Kathryn, age 5

  You want to have sex with policemen forever? That’s a disturbing commitment.

  F

  Jade, age 5

  Upon glancing, one might think little Jade is making an admirable career choice to be a teacher . . . until you notice that there’s a MOTHERFUCKING BED IN THE CLASSROOM! Red flag!

  F

  Molly, age 5

  Good news, Molly. Since you’re built like a pole, you actually have a really good shot at being a “tether.”

  F

  Fernando, age 6

  With the right combination of greasy food and a lighter, anyone can become a “firefarter.”

  F

  Susan, age 6

  Bad news, Susan. You can’t be much balder than this.

  F

  Ken, age 10

  Is there a norm that all clowns aspire to, or are they all just doomed to look like people who’d feel at home with your kidneys simmering on their stoves? Maybe I’m projecting. But still.

  F

  Cory, age 8

  I’ve never been raped by a clown, but I suspect this is the last thing you’d see before it happened.

  F

  Alyssa, age 11

  This is what it would look like if you could paint with a palette made entirely of children’s nightmares.

  F

  Rob & JD, age 10

  Here we go. You know this guy has seen problems something fierce. This motherfucker is the real deal.

  F+

  Irving, age 5

  I can only infer that you want to eat your cat. Awesome.

  F+

  Genevieve, age 4

  I would be sad too if I looked like a smashed asshole.

  F

  Melaina, age 6

  Life is not a cartoon where you and your trendy friends stand around with a FUCKING POLAR BEAR in the room. These animals are vicious killing machines.

  F

  Maddox, age 32

  This is what your encounter with the polar bear would really look like:

  A+

  Marie, age 10

  You get points for the enemies section; anything bigger than you is generally your enemy in life. Including fat people. Especially fat people.

  F+

  Ralph, age 6

  My goal in life is to witness enough astonishing shit to constantly look as surprised as everything in this drawing.

  F+

  Dax, age 6

  Your pet tiger is either horny or retarded. For the sake of decorum, I’m eliminating the possibility that he could be both.

  F

  Billy, age 6

  No, 3 + 3 ≠ d. Also, this has nothing to do with anything.

  F-

  Arthur, age 8

  It’s said that art should make a statement. And I believe the statement this art is making is: “fuck it.”

  F

  Pablo Picasso?

  I have a sneaking suspicion that Pablo Picasso didn’t make this.

  F

  Alan, age 7

  Finally a roller coaster for people who want to experience the thrill of death.

  F

  Arthur, age 7

  I can only assume that the person about to kill himself on the carousel is the park owner, because even he doesn’t understand what the fuck happened to his roller coaster.

  F

  A’darrion, age 7

  Thank you for saving me the trouble of scribbling all over this.

  F+

  Justin, age 6

  This sucks. You suck. Check out my roller coaster on the next page.

  F

  Maddox, age 32

  BAM! This is so awesome it makes my balls ache. This coaster takes you through a lumberjack’s bowels, out his pooper, and through a pile of lumberjack turds. Awesome and classy!

  Heather, age 8

  Did you mean to write “queen”? Because if I were queer for a day, I’d probably buy some denim capris and do some gay shit.

  F

  Many people believe that children have unique insights into the world and can see solutions to problems where none exist. So I asked kids what they thought the biggest problem in the world was today. Their answers were enlightening, not because they had a unique ability to observe problems we’ve taken for granted, but because their problems were incredibly myopic or self-serving: homework or earthquakes. Here’s a small sample of the nonproblems chosen by children:

  Tetsuo, age 8

  When you want to make the case that there’s too much school in the world today, spelling the word “school” correctly will bolster your case.

  F

  Jared, age 8 or Maddox, age 32

  I had so many submissions about school being the biggest problem in the world today, that I started to believe it, renounced my education, and ate a box of crayons. My subsequent bowel movement was this drawing.

  F

  Brent, age 8

  Buildings falling on teepee villages would indeed be a problem today if structural engineers suddenly became morons . . . and people still lived in teepee villages.

  F

  Chelsey, age 9

  Can you imagine lawmakers on Capitol Hill debating what to do with gum wrappers? Me neither.

  F

  Joseph, age 9

  There is so much wrong with this picture. First, how could there be no water in the North Pole? Even the most aggressive global-warming models don’t predict total evaporation of the oceans. They do, however, predict a rise in ocean levels due to the melting of polar ice caps. Which leads me to the next problem: if the ice caps have melted, then how is the penguin still standing on ice? And if it’s hot enough for oceans to evaporate, how is one solitary penguin still alive? And why are there penguins at the North Pole anyway? Penguins live in the South Pole. Also, if all the water evaporated on earth, people would be dying of dehydration and famine. WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT A SINGLE PENGUIN?

  F

  Mario, age 9

  That’s rather presumptuous.

  F-

  Rosa, age 9

  Words like “before” and “after” are weasel words because they aren’t being used to qualify anything. Before what? You should be ashamed of yourself.

  F

  Janice, age 9

  Yeah, actually. Hippies are a huge problem today.

  F+

  Gail, age 9

  Way to be a bitter man-hating crone at age nine. You’re going to make some unlucky man very miserable someday.

  F-

  Ellyn, age 9

  Way to illustrate the devastation of an earthquake by drawing a bird’s nest falling out of a tree. That really drove the point home.

  F

  Josh, age 6

  If the monkeys escaped at the zoo, people wouldn’t stand around yelling, “Zoo!” That would be like cops called to investigate a shooting and yelling, “Crime scene!”

  F

  Amy, age 9

  I agree with this statement.

  F+

  Stop the press! Turns out kids are narcissists. When they were asked to draw their idea of who the most beautiful boy or girl in the world was, most of the kids drew themselves. I like to think these are pretty spot-on:

  Lee, age 8

  Gay.

  F

  Suzi, age 8

  Slut.

  F

  Summer, age 6

  I know dick about fashion, but I feel like if I were a six-year-old girl, I’d know not to wear things like trapezoid aprons and square turtlenecks. Maybe just wear some shoes to cover up those stumpy monkey toes. Something.

  F

  Matthew, age 7

  Duly noted.

  F-

  Jamie, age 4

  “I’m sorry, your
entry into the most beautiful girl in the world contest did not win.”

  F

  One of my assignments in high school English class was to write a daily journal entry. I found this especially difficult for a reason that I wouldn’t learn until years later after getting the results of a DNA test: I’m genetically averse to busywork. So I would test my teachers to see if they actually read anything I wrote by writing backward, using made-up words with randomly chosen consonants and vowels, copying down receipts, and arranging my sentences in odd geometric shapes. Every entry received the same grade of a “checkmark” for completion. None of it mattered, and the following submissions seem to be no exception.

  Janelle, age 11

  I wouldn’t choose to deliver a baby in a mouth, but I suppose it’d do in a pinch. There have been worse things dumped into mouths.

  Vanessa, age 11

  You have said nothing. You wrote an entire paragraph and literally said nothing. That’s actually really hard to do. Hats off.

  F+

  Brittany, age 9

  When you’re nine years old, saying a place is the best restaurant you’ve ever been to in your life doesn’t mean anything. Most babies would probably rank their mom’s titties pretty high.

  F

  Sophie-Jasmin, age 11

  Do you honestly think you can win on a platform of making the boys serve the girls dinner? Also, you can’t just say “I will change everything” and then say “I told you I would” a few sentences later unless you’ve actually changed something. Bye!

  F

  Diego, age 5

  This book is a two-page autobiography titled “All About Me.” It’s a description of Diego’s ability to walk. Honestly, this is less crappy than most books I’ve read.

  F+

  Jimmy, age 6

  If you wrote a story like this in prison, you’d get shanked.

  F

  Brev, age 6

  Might want to hold off on that dedication, son.

  F

  In Japan, English teachers often make their kids do exercises like writing a letter to a pen pal in America or the UK to practice their writing. The cultural difference, however, is often neglected in the curriculum, allowing for some awkward exchanges to arise. I have mastered American culture and language, and have used my superior ability to criticize these nonnative speakers. Some might cry foul because their first spoken language wasn’t English, and I would point out that neither was mine.*

  Yuichiro, age 8

  For a first introduction, topics of discussion usually include what you do, hobbies, and movies you like. But not really fish. In fact, never fish.

  F

  Chinami, age 13

  Dear Chinami, I don’t have a sister. I have a brother. So he is my sister. I like she very much. Arigato!

  F

  Yoshiko, age 12

  Almost every square inch of this postcard is jam packed with a Japanese cliché. The only thing it’s missing is anime speed lines:

  Is it racist that I really want ramen right now?

  F

  The following are from eighth-grade worksheets on sexism, drugs, AIDS and babies. These are all subjects I excel at.

  Meghan, age 14

  No, sexism is when you are prejudiced against someone because of their sex. You’d know the answer to this if you were a man.

  F

  Both the question and the answer are wrong. Just because you see a housemom on TV doesn’t mean they think all women are housemoms. Assumptions are different from depictions, you idiots.

  F-

  Rolene, age 14

  No. Crib death is not a symptom of drug withdrawal, unless you mean the mother’s Prozac?

  F

  Athena, age 13

  This is objectively true. The NFL has about $9 billion in annual revenue, and would rank somewhere around number 260 on the Fortune 500. No women’s sport comes close.

  What would it even mean to strongly disagree with this?

  It’s not even controversial to say that women are physically weaker than men and generally don’t make good construction workers for that reason. Facts aren’t inherently sexist.

  F

  George, age 14

  You know, it’s easy to write George off as a smart-ass, but these are all literal interpretations of the illustrations and I blame the test maker for lack of clarity, not the test taker.

  F+ for George, and/F— for the worksheet.

  Brandon, age 10

  I actually agree with this kid. Going on a monster hunt is a good way to stay drug free. I’m not sure what being a cryptozoologist has to do with anything, though.

  F

  Ren, age 13

  This slogan is lazy because you could put almost any word next to “suicide” to make it seem negative; for example, kitten suicide and Disney suicide. The one exception may be lesbian orgy suicide, which is always positive.

  F

  Why not suggest that people avoid dying by not going to places where they’ll die?

  F

  Brian, age 10

  More like “yes to boners.”

  F

  Shane, age 16

  The resemblance to Will Smith is uncanny; I knew this was him right away.

  F+

  Shane, age 16

  This is supposed to be Will Smith’s mom. I’ve never met the lady, so this might be spot-on.

  F+

  Gardner, age 11

  Our commander in chief: a giant, robotic golfing puppet. Or is he peeing? In any case,

  F

  Albert, age 12

  Obama might look like this if a cartoon cigar exploded in his face. Racist.

  F-

  Brian, age 5

  I’m 60% sure SpongeBob didn’t have herpes on the TV show.

  F

  Gabbie, age 8

  There are no angels where he’s going.

  F

  Ever wonder why you keep in touch with only four or five friends from high school? If so, go back and read your yearbook comments to be reminded: everyone was a huge gristly dick to you all the time. Here are a few examples:

  Josh, age 13

  Hey, Josh, hope you don’t get abducted from your family while traveling in Europe over the summer. Just kidding.

  F

  Jeni, age 17

  If “bitchiness” were a category, this entry would win the Pulitzer Prize.

  F

  Pedro, age 14

  This is the yearbook equivalent of douchebags who comment “first” on forums.

  F

  Jordan, age 18

  You’re not only offering to let her risk her job, but then she gets to have sex with you? Give this man a cigar.

  F+

  Natasha, age 15

  “Hello, Natasha? Hi, this is Person from middle school? Shut up! I was just thinking about you too!”