“Adams’ Apple”, revisited
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t care enough about the comic strip Adams’ Apple to carry on a grudge-match with the artist or the strip, unlike, apparently, Nathan Sheets. (Mistyped “pondering” in the final sentence, btw.) It is a mediocre comic strip admist a sea of mediocre comic strips — which I end up reading occasionally because sometimes, when I have the comic strip page open, it takes more effort not to read a comic-strip than it does to read one.
The situation of the paricular strip I mentioned in September of 2006 was both a special case and not a special case. Understand that episode as being about the teacher’s discomfort with having to deal with the possibility of one student’s differing religious creed, and his relief when it turned out that “Whew! For a moment I thought he was one of THOSE kids raised by THAT TYPE of parent”. (Regretfully I can’t run it to “in THOSE neighborhoods.”) It is the strip that jarred me the most, but the cartoonist regularly ends up drawing up these weirdly revealing strips, ones that lead me to think “Um… That’s a YOU problem.”
The problem is I do not care enough to document the atrocities, or keep a mental rolodex. I remember that one strip, and the others that fall into that category and give me similar pause elude me due to apathy. Further, I fear that discussing the matter would get back to the cartoonist and give him some gratification of earning a weird sort of chit, anecdotal evidence that he must be doing something right — why, I can spark controversy! So I’m just left with one slightly obnoxious teacher drawing out his occasionally obnoxious thoughts in a slightly-tedious but mostly innocuous and bland comic strip, and perhaps occasionally reminding me why it’s a good thing I’m long gone from the years of K-12.