These are my thoughts on Indoctrination

Alright, I may have accidentally instilled in my kids the idea that BYU is the only acceptable school/sports team in the world. You may not believe me, but this was entirely unintentional. And in my defense, BYU gave me my degree and my job, so I don't think I can really be blamed for supporting that particular university. 

Well my allegiance has rubbed off on the 22 small children I spend all day with. The other day we had a donut party and one of my kids was literally in tears because he didn't get a 'BYU donut' (a donut with blue and white sprinkles). They have requested to learn the BYU fight song during singing time and Jimmer Fredette and Kyle Van Noy are both on our poster of "Who can be in our stories?" I have clearly been aware for quite some time that they are all becoming mini cougar fans. But I had no idea how far it had really gone.

Today my entire class booed two kids who said their favorite color was red. 

This is not even an exaggeration. During a lesson on having opinions, I labeled each corner of the room with a different color: blue, green, red and pink. I then had the kids go to the corner of the color they thought was best. I was not surprised when the vast majority of my class went to the blue corner. A handful of girls skipped over to the pink corner and a few boys chose green.

Two kids chose red.

Which caused an outrageous uproar. 

Twenty voices started yelling and booing, while a shocked and slightly terrified little girl hid under the table and a very defiant little boy shouted back "I still love BYU! I just like the color red!" 

When I finally got everyone calmed down, we had to have a talk about respecting other people's opinions (and a short lesson on the fact that the color red does not equal the Utes). My poor red supporters still got some dirty looks as I gave the instructions for the rest of the assignment. I might need to be more diverse about the sports teams and universities I talk about in class from now on. 

And just for fun, here are the reasons they came up with for why their colors were the best:

Blue Team

"Our opinion is blue is the best because it is BYU colors and because it is a popular color." (No surprise there)

Pink Team

"Our opinion is pink is the best because it is the color of bubblegum ice cream and because you can have hot pink, light pink and dark pink."

Red Team

"Our opinion is red is the best because it is the color of blood (what????) and because red is the best kind of snow cone."

Green Team (This one is my favorite)

"Our opinion is green is the best because that is the color of leprechauns and because green can make the world a better place."