Learning By Listening at Whole Foods Market

Hello Internet,
This is Whole Foods Market: scene. Whole Foods Market is a grocery store that sellsFor anyone who has never been to a Whole Foods Market before, please allow me to set the "natural" foods (their term, not mine). In most cases, "natural" means "organic"; "organic" means...well, that is a question for another post. The employees are, for the most part, hip and young, usually with dyed hair and some sort of piercing on their face. They aren't punks, there just sort of non-threateningly cool. (Like this guy from the London Whole Foods Market ->).

The idea is, that by shopping at Whole Foods Market, you: 1) save the environment and 2) are young, hip, and a tiny bit dangerous, just like the employees. Whole Foods Market shoppers have the added joy of sticking it to the man.

I overheard many humorously self-important conversations during a recent dinner at the Whole Foods Market Cafe. Today I'll just talk about one. I overheard the conversation of three women who were eating couscous and talking about their experiences as parents. The conversation drifted towards the performance of their children in school. Listening to them, I realized...EVERY MIDDLE CLASS WHITE KID IS A GENIUS!!! Let's break it down, internet:

Case 1: Jamison
Jamison gets poor grades. The problem is that his teachers don't realize how gifted he is, and so he is constantly bored due to a lack of mental stimulation. Border Collies have been known to be destructive when they don't get enough exercise. Jamison is basically the same way. A boy of his brilliance should not be forced to learn how to read and write. Instead, he should be encouraged to learn in his own unique way, which in this case consists of watching Shrek III.

Case 2: Ethan
Ethan also gets bad grades. This time, unlike with poor Jamison, the teachers recognize that Ethan is a true eleven-year-old savant. Unfortunately, while his brilliance has not gone undetected by his astute teachers, the school board won't allow her to nurture little Ethan's gifts. According to Ethan's mom, the school board's main objective is to find bright lights, like Ethan, and snuff them out with long division and reading comprehension tests. Ethan's talent (I heard her say this) is video games. He has trouble remembering to carry the one when adding 17 and 15, but he can play LEGO Star Wars for hours on end. She is sure he will become a programmer because most programmers learn their trade in a sudden epiphany after hours of gaming: "My World of Warcraft Guild just beat Onyxia's Lair...that must mean that Levenshtein distance is going to be important in fuzzy string searches."

Case 3: Emma
Emma gets good grades in her classes. She is only thirteen but she has been trying to read The Great Gatsby. Her brother brought it home to read for his 11th grade English class, but has not made much progress so she decided to give it a shot. She plays for her middle school soccer team and is the only seventh grader who usually starts. The only problem, according to her mother, is whether or not she is brilliant, like the other two kids. She seems just ordinary smart while the Jamison and Ethan have real intellectual potential.

In conclusion, if you shop at Whole Foods Market, then your kid is genius. Wow. This post really went downhill fast. This is a pretty terrible ending. I am so sorry.