The Good, The Bad, and the Preggers

When my rents first dragged me out into the rural wilds of the Midwest, they did so partially because Iowa is famous for its good schools, and is generally considered to be one of the safer places in the country. For the first few years I was stuck here, Iowa did indeed uphold its stereotype; quiet, religious, and uneventful, if perhaps a bit sleazier than my Oregon hometown. It seems, though, that in the last few months our town has decided suddenly to drop the nice-clean-rural image.

During the summer two murders took place, and a few car robberies on our street this fall, but the bulk of the trouble seems to be coming from my high school. Since the beginning of this school year, several fights between students have taken place (during one of which a teacher was trampled), one student was arrested for attacking a teacher outright, and another was busted for selling meth within the school. The strange thing is that apparently none of the boys in my school are participating in any of this lawlessness; fist fights and drug dealing are handled by the ladies in this town, it seems. On top of all this, the number of teen pregnancies in town have suddenly spiked. There are at least two girls in my school that have already had children, and (I think) three or four girls that are presently pregnant. That may sound like a small number to some, but for this old fashioned place, the number is almost shocking. Plus, only a year ago, it seemed that no one our age was pregnant, and that for such a thing to happen was extremely rare. I witnessed the end of one of the recent scuffles, while the two scufflers were being dragged away. One was screaming at the other girl, "Whore! If you weren't pregnant I'd kick you in the stomach!" Ironically, the insult-thrower was, in fact, pregnant herself.

A friend of mine blames the influx of new kids from Chicago for the recent uprisings and baby-havings. Why this exodus from a city so much more....modern than our small, corn-choked town? Some blame the influx of illegal aliens and the gangs they bring with them into the big cities, claiming that said gangs start driving out the decent folk and the native gangsters, thus dumping new city kids of looser morals on this hickish little place. Instead of researching the truth value of this particular statement, I've decided this post on moral decay will be the lead-in to another, much longer-winded post on immigration, specifically illegal immigration from Mexico. To make this long, uncoming post short: The Ranting Kid is for controlled immigration. And not because of racial issues, ya hear, but because of LOGICAL reasoning. LOGIC, DAMN IT!