the tragedy of reality

I'm glad that Lindsey Jacobellis chose hot-dogging over winning the medal.

I've been thinking lately that the main goal of education is to give students a taste of the pain of adulthood as children. This serves two functions. First, young people can be vaguely prepared for inevitable dissatisfaction with their lives. Secondly, it allows teachers a somewhat sadistic opportunity to deprive students of their free-time to make them learn the intricacies of the endoplastic reticulum or the unappreciated beauty of the fourth declension.

Hopefully, after all of this, some students will learn that the color of the Olympic medal you're wearing doesn't make you a better or worse person, and that hot-dogging on a swowboard has a tautological justification. Now, spiking the football in the end-zone, that's a different matter.