A Tribute To The Cookie Monster And Mountain Dew Pajama Pants Kids
There are certain things that, regardless of where you live, every single school has. Pencils, paper, teachers, students and that one stinky kid who wears either Cookie Monster or Mountain Dew pajama pants to school every day. Will they also sometimes pair these fuzzy pants with an Invader Zim hat? A pair of Osiris shoes? A faint odor of cigarettes creeping out of their jansport backpack? A remarkably nutritionally-lacking breakfast eaten during first period? Maybe. But, the pants were always there, a friendly and tragically unwelcome walking, (often loudly) talking, stinky, Spencer's store version of a human being. Like pencils and paper, this student was a cultural cornerstone in which schools would cease to exist without...until now.
One (me) would have believed that many schools moving to strictly online would have, if anything, emboldened and strengthened these particular individual's stranglehold on this type of dress. School from home? Everyone is in their pajamas! Jeans? What are those? Sweatpants season! No pants no problem! This is at least the group mentality I have seen shared nearly one million times by all of my mother's friends I have the absolute pleasure of being friends with on Facebook. They will certainly be thriving, flourishing in their stinky, unapproachable glory in the confines of their ramshackle room, which is inevitably littered with empty energy drink cans.
Apparently, however, this is not the case everywhere. Actually, it is quite the opposite. According to an article by Fox 5 DC, the main school district in Springfield Illinois has decided to update its school dress code policy for remote learning. Students are not able to wear pajama pants, slippers or hats while they are on camera schooling from home.
What an absolute travesty for those kids who have grown so familiar to this certain form of attire. Isn't the entire goal of at-home learning to make everything as familiar and normal as possible? It doesn't seem particularly fair to spring this new concept on these students. If anything, I could see it massively skewing the homeostasis that is necessary for a school district to function. We need these kids, if we didn't we would have evolved past them by now. Who else is going to keep a Spencer's gag gifts and fun gifts in every single fucking mall in America? Something needs to change.