The last of the test results are in, so it’s time again to revisit the tale of 8th graders and bottled water … previously posted here and here.
After nearly 30 tests at four different labs, scientists haven’t found out why bottled water allegedly made La Mesa Junior High School students sick, a county health official said Thursday.
“The bottles were not contaminated. Our conclusion is that the water met all water quality standards,” said Terrance Powell, director of the Bureau of Specialized Surveillance and Enforcement for Los Angeles County.
The most recent round of tests analyzed whether the bottled Aquafina water contained fungus, yeast and mold, Powell said.
The results were negative when they came back this week, he said.
That leaves county health officials unable to explain what happened.
“I cannot explain the allegation of cloudy water and ‘off’ odors that may have been experienced,” Powell said. “Everything came back negative.
So it seems there was absolutely nothing at all wrong with the bottled water at La Mesa Junior High School. Nothing at all to explain why a bunch of 8th graders became ill after drinking the perfectly potable water from the vending machine. Therefore, I stand by my very first assessment that they are 8th graders being 8th graders, and there really never was anything at all wrong with the water. Whether it was panic attacks caused by life in our post-9/11, fear-centric society or ulterior motives, we will never know, but the water? We do know there was nothing at all wrong with the water.
I suggest we start testing the 8th graders next.
It was in eighth grade that I concluded that ‘educators’ weren’t the smartest people in the world.
It was in university that I concluded that colleges of education and business existed primarily so that dumb middle class girls and dumb middle class boys could goof off for four years, meet, marry and get jobs to replicate and perpetrate their drone existence. Just the way their handlers want.
Dumb people don’t know they’re dumb, and therein lies the great paradox of American Exceptionalism. Dumbness either goes unacknowledged or is presented as cute. It won’t become an issue until it begins to hurt us economically to a degree that even dumb people feel it. But even then we’ll probably blame the French.
Me too. 8th grade was when I realized I could outsmart the teachers if I wanted to do so. And I’ve had a lot of experience with that age group too. My very first thought when this story broke was that the first kid wanted to get out of school. Maybe a test he hadn’t studied for. Maybe wanted attention. Who knows. Then, because 8th graders do group panic very well and they also are very good at manipulating circumstances, it just escalated from there. If you walk into a classroom and ask them if anyone who drank some bottles water feels sick, you will have some sick 8th graders, whether they are actually sick or not.
Oh yeah, university. After my first year, I decided that as much as I loved music and music theory, it wasn’t something I wanted to study and do for the rest of my life, so I just started taking classes. My adviser stuck me in the education department at first. I have never been so bored. BORED. And I love going to school, but seriously, the classes actually in that department were fluffy. I finally ignored my adviser and just started signing up for the psych, English, and art classes that did interest me.
And the business department? Ha. When I was a senior, I thought having a few business classes might be a good idea, just for the skills. I signed up for an accounting class and a business communications class. I eventually dropped the accounting class mostly because the other students (business majors) were driving me insane, and the first day of the other class the prof told me to leave class, never come back, promise to read the textbook, and he’d give me an A, because he knew I was going to be bored to tears and would get an A anyway. I took him up on it. I never stepped foot in that building again. Corporate culture was rampant, and that was before it was the way it is now, so I can only imagine how “worker bee” it is now. They definitely don’t teach them to think for themselves about anything, that’s for sure.
Ever so thankful I spent my university years hanging with the cranky psych profs, the somewhat snobby literature and linguistics profs, and the slightly crazy art profs. They taught me the most important lessons of all … question everything and everyone, look beneath the surface of stuff, always speak your mind, and have some fun while doing it.
I can forgive people who are dumb because they really don’t have the brainpower not to be. I can forgive people for being ignorant because they haven’t had the chances I have to get an education. What I can’t forgive is the willful and obstinate ignorance I see around me these days. I can put hard cold facts into someone’s hands, absolute proof of the truth of something, and they don’t see it, hear it, or acknowledge it as even possibly being true. That pisses me right off.