uniforms and the man

The bus was 10 minutes early today. Lucky for them and the schoolboy, I am obsessive about anything that has a scheduled time and was up much earlier than I had to be, making my child into the image of all his classmates, and all the other kids in this district. I tell you, there is something creepy about kids in uniforms. It's like the perfect intro to a music video with zombies or something.  And I should l know, since I spent my whole childhood encased in white oxford shirts and yards and yards of pleated plaid. I don't think they could make Catherine Zeta-Jones look good in one of those monstrosities. Plaid with pleats. It had to be thought up in some sadistic gulag-planning committee. Or something. Exhibit A: 

*Shudder*

I get it, okay? This is so all kids look equally bad and the poor/ugly/fat kids are less likely to be bullied for wearing poor/ugly/fat clothes. News flash, administrators of America. That's not really working. When I put my special needs kid with glasses in a pair of khaki slacks and a polo shirt, he looks even MORE special. Let me send him to school in a guitar shirt and some ripped jeans and the guy has a fighting chance to be ignored... 

It's nice to not think about what he has to wear every day, except the panic of did-that-stuff-even-go-into-the-dryer panic, but man. I just don't know. This whole army of look-alikes weirds me out. 

I wasn't even going to talk about this today. I was going to talk about homeschooling Toby, and his obsessive erasing and total meltdown when I took his eraser away. But somehow this whole uniform thing crept up on me like a pair of tiny kelly green gym shorts, paired with a mustard yellow gym shirt. Piney Woods teachers: what were you thinking? And what's the statue of limitations on hate crimes?