IN WHICH WE GET MEDIEVAL

As you can see from this blog's new RSS feed from Noodle's school, we have an Idiot at large in town who has jammed up an entire town's schedule and wasted tight public resources with his manifest dungforbrainsedness. We have in our midst a certified Drooler. A knucklehead. A moron. Was I supposed to say something more sensitive like troubled youth instead? Feh.

On the other hand, should our perp be caught and brought to account for his bogus threat, I'm not sure it helps matters to add to his street cred with a quick trip through New York's criminal justice system.

And then the pumpkins quietly decaying on our front porch gave rise to an idea. A modest proposal, if you will...the stocks:


One hour, in the middle of town, pelted with whatever's gone bad from the fall harvest - and then a clean slate. Nothing on the juvenile record, nothing in the DNA database, no anger-managment or idiocy-abatement sessions. Just a taste of humiliation and then all's square and we move on. It's cheap, it's quick, it's cathartic, and it unmistakably ties actions to their consequences.