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The Short-Lived Triumph of the Junior School’s Health & Safety Officer

The children wait in line to sanitize
Their grubby hands before their morning class.
The teacher guards the door, and none may pass
Without a mask beneath his anguished eyes,
Then, once inside, all sullen chatter dies
At distanced desks encased in Plexiglass.

Observing all with swelling satisfaction,
The safety officer lets out a sigh.
Although all children will at first defy
New rules to test authority’s reaction,
They crave the comfort of familiar action
Which will, in turn, subdue and stupefy.

This ritual abuse is sanctified
By the self-righteous cloak of victimhood
She dons on their behalf and, if she could,
She’d cleanse this world with cool liberticide
So, with free will and passion petrified,
All would at last behave as children should.

Each tired, dejected groan proclaims another
Small victory in her unending war
Against those fearless or unbowed by Law,
And each fresh opportunity to smother
Those tender spirits she presumes to mother
Will only make her ravenous for more.

She has no children of her own, just one
Abortion and two cats; her legacy
A suffocating pall of policy
Designed to subjugate and murder fun.
It blankets all, but it comforts none
Except this mindless, petty Pharisee.

But at the back of class there sits a boy
Indifferent to her regime of fear.
Imagining a windswept, wild frontier,
He summons some vile monster to destroy.
Then, mind ablaze with grim and savage joy,
He hoists the Gorgon’s head upon his spear.

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Shaun C. Duncan is a picture framer and fine art printer who lives in Adelaide, South Australia.

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22 Responses

  1. Paul Freeman

    For the most part, I was seeing Miss Trunchbull from ‘Matilda’ and Paula Hall from ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’, Shaun. You’ve characterised ‘the safety officer’ very well.

    Funnily enough (as I seem to often say), I was refused entry to an office block for having short sleeves. I got a bit shirty (no pun intended) with the security guards, but it wasn’t really their fault and since the next person up the food chain was equally as intransigent, I just had to go home and put on a long-sleeved shirt.

    Anyhow, thanks for a thoughtful read.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thanks, Paul. I’m not familiar with ‘Hunt For The Wilderpeople’ and I’ve not read Matilda. My kids always ask their mother to read that one for some reason – I’m better at The Witches because I can do the High Witch’s accent. I’ll take both comparisons as compliments, though. I’m certainly an admirer of Dahl’s mean-spiritedness toward people who deserve it.

      I can’t imagine the justification for being refused entry to an office block for wearing short sleeves. People are just grasping at any opportunity to exercise power over others.

      Reply
  3. Jack DesBois

    This is great! I’m sending it to my out-of-work teacher siblings. Among the forms of child abuse that prompted my brother to quit his job here in New England was the school’s policy of keeping the windows open for air circulation, all through the winter. (There’s a reason why they call it catching a cold…)

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      I’m glad you liked it Jack and I’m honoured that you’d think it worthy of sending to people who’ve actually had to endure such nonsense. I made the decision years ago to become self-employed precisely to avoid being subject to these sort of dictates so I feel like I am one of the lucky ones these days. I really feel for people who have been forced to leave their jobs over it.

      Keeping the windows open during a New England winter is insane. We’ve just had a similar but contrasting bout of madness here in Australia where kids have been forced to wear masks all day in class during summer, when temperatures routinely reach 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

      Reply
  4. Sally Cook

    Once these “health officers” have squeezed the last bit of individuality and independence out of this poor benighted generation, what will be left?
    Dozens of docile, depressed dummies, I fear. So far as I can see, all the folderol of masks and vaccine passports are nothing more than exercises in population control, which sooner or later surfaces itself in childish rage. Thanks for addressing this worldwide problem with your excellent poetic parable.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thanks to people like this, we currently live under a form of passive-aggressive totalitarianism. It’s obviously been brewing for quite some time, but covid gave them the opportunity to go full throttle. I agree it’s all about control and preparation for what comes next. The only consolation I take is that this can only create a weak society which is easily toppled so it won’t last for long. Who does the toppling and what comes after is another question. Hopefully it comes from within.

      Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you. You’ve already made me feel very welcome, Sally. I appreciate it.

      Reply
  6. Mike Bryant

    This is a perfect look at not just one jobsworth but the entire teachers’ union. Are they only following orders? I think I’ve heard that phrase before. Our children and grandchildren are dying in the tens of thousands because of this covidiocy.
    The last line is pure genius. Bravo!

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thanks, Mike. The poem was initially inspired by the rage I felt at taking my daughter to kindergarten for the first time and seeing the kids lined up to use hand sanitizer before they were allowed to go in. Of course, people like this are intent on infantilizing our whole society – they just go for the kids first because they can’t fight back.

      I’m glad you like the ending. When I started writing the piece I decided to use the same rhyme scheme as Browning’s ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ (a favourite of mine) for no other reason than it seemed like a fun challenge but then the idea of a quest immediately struck me as exactly the sort of impulse the safety officer would abhor.

      Reply
  7. Margaret Coats

    A triumph of the imagination, Shaun, for the boy at the back of the class and for you. Your well-chosen details of the story are interspersed with your analytic interpretation of it, leaving you free at the end of the poem to depict grim and savage joy in the mind of anyone capable of it.

    With tyrannical governmental restrictions now somewhat eased, we are seeing copycat petty tyrants emerge. Where I live, with governor and mayor graciously allowing us to enter public spaces unmasked, the teachers’ union is the most ridiculous offender. They have no fears for the children’s health, nor even for their own, or so their representatives claimed, until they were forced to retreat. Why were masks still needed? Because masks will surely come back some day, and then it will be so much more difficult to force children to put them on again! At least they grasp child psychology.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you, Margaret. As a great admirer of your work, your kind words mean a lot to me.

      Where I live most restrictions are still in place. I feel like this must be one of the last cities in the world with an active mask mandate. The people here are so well trained that half of them still wear them outside in the Australian summer. I’ve even seen people at the beach wearing them. In Victoria, which I recently escaped, school children are the only ones subject to mask mandates and the government has been pretty open about the fact that it’s to drive up the vaccination rate among young children. It’s obscene.

      And yes, it seems all over the western world at least the teachers’ unions have been the main instigators of all this.

      Reply
  8. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Shaun, from the intrigue of the title to the triumph of the imagination in the closing stanza, this poem sings to me. You have captured the sheer horror of today’s classrooms with your admirably woven words. For me, the fourth stanza was particularly chilling, especially with the excellent rhyme endings mother/smother. How tough it is to leave our beloved children in the “care” of those who do anything but. I adore the flood of spirit-lifting, linguistic sunshine in the dark classroom in the closing stanza… I think that monster-slaying boy has the heart of a poet. Thank you very much!

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you, Susan. As a parent to one school-age child and two who will soon be entering that environment, I find myself feeling more and more uneasy with the prospect. Fortunately my wife and I are in a position to home school if need be and we are in agreement that we will do so if the situation gets much worse.

      I’m glad you found the title intriguing. I see the title as a free line, so I try to make the most of it!

      Reply
  9. Joseph S. Salemi

    Shaun, the “Health and Safety Officer” you describe in this delightful poem is an example of what I call “The Officially Stupid.” These are persons who are fixated on useless and pointless procedures and regulations, and who insist that you also must be fixated on them. They include most postal clerks, social workers, bureaucrats, and bank tellers. In education today, they are as numerous and pestiferous as rats in a sewer system.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      “The Officially Stupid” is a great term for them and it’s certainly their time to shine at the moment. There’s a certain personality type that enjoys enforcing pointless rules. They tend to gravitate toward the roles you describe, but covid seems to have brought them out of the woodwork everywhere. I will never forget, near the beginning of the lockdowns in Melbourne, being told off by a teenage cashier at the supermarket for not standing on one of the Xs they’d placed on the floor with tape to ensure we all complied with social distancing guidelines. She’ll go far under the current regime.

      I honestly can’t imagine working in education these days, particularly at a university.

      Reply
  10. David Watt

    Shaun, your topical poem brims with a combination of imagination and truth.
    Speaking of inane health directions, as you know, the differences here in rules between states makes a mockery of scientific principles. Whether it’s a School Health and Safety Officer, or a state official, they get their kicks from the power drug.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you, David. Yes, people of a certain personality type have been lying in wait for an opportunity like this. They don’t even seem to care what the rules are so long as they get to inconvenience others and receive a giddy little thrill from the exercise of power.

      Reply
  11. C.B. Anderson

    The irony has been noted, judged, and carefully placed in the proper archives. Thanks for the excellent work.

    Reply

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