When I was in 4th grade, our principal Mr. Price always forced us to tuck in our shirts.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*mfStyH8wlv2vo0FqTLXToQ.jpeg)
I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but I clearly should have.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*UkK9Whz15cHGUr-5Poxx_g.jpeg)
What Price was doing, it has since been revealed, was part of a long-term and wide ranging plot to distract the student body from things that really matter by occupying our minds with things that don’t.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lMnaHq1Eda5nYmGkPRzo7w.jpeg)
Once we were “educated” to perseverate over petty, pointless concerns, he and his principal chums were free to pillage and plunder with reckless abandon and ever-increasing reach.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*_2Z8oVhPrc2mfqwY8YeD-A.jpeg)
To make matters worse, those early encounters with authoritarian shirt tucking policies have left us primed to accept wide-spread oppression by principals who insist they’re our “pals.”
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*t9befOAP3inDi5h5YyI9ww.jpeg)
If only we had all refused to tuck in our shirts while we still had the chance.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Ym5OIg-gj9FopfIbcx6_8A.jpeg)