Dave Shoemaker

Contributing columnist

Back when I taught 6th Grade, I had a kid named Joe who was, shall we say, a little on the edge. He’d been in trouble so many times his mail was delivered to the principal’s office. I knew about all this at the beginning of the year but, as I did with all my kids, I was going to let him start with a clean slate. The first couple of weeks were uneventful, but Joe never said a word. I decided the best plan would be to just give him time and try to draw him out slowly. Sure enough, one day we were talking about careers and I was asking my kids if they had any idea what they wanted to do for a living someday. The topic then turned to animals, so I asked the class if anyone would like to work with animals in the future. Among the four or five students who raised their hand was Joe. Ah, I thought – a breakthrough. I worked my way slowly over to him. I asked one of the kids how they wanted to work with animals, and she said she wanted to be a veterinarian. Another said he wanted to run a daycare for dogs. And then I turned to Joe. The conversation went like this:

Me: “Joe, how would you like to work with animals?”

Joe: “I want to work in a slaughterhouse.”

That, my friends, was Joe’s idea of “working with animals.”