Some years back a bill was introduced in the Louisiana State Senate requiring school students to stand up when a teacher entered the room. Maybe some student would have been charged to stand up and shout “Ten-Hut” when a teacher or administrator came through the door. Then the teacher or administrator would go to the front, look over the class, and then order, “Ready, seats.”

The bill would also have required those students to address their teachers as “sir” or “m’am.” The purpose of such legislation was stated as a way to prevent the shootings that have taken place in some school districts around the nation. In other words, if a student shot a teacher, he would have been required to say, “Excuse me, m’am.” The victim will be just as dead, of course, but at least she will be sent on to eternity with courtesy.

There have also been a number of bills to allow students to pray out loud school. Usually it was claimed such a law also would help prevent the shootings. When I was in school, Alfred Anderson might have prayed that somebody would bring a gun and shoot the teacher who rapped him in the head for not saying “m’am.”

Lawmakers often claim to know what is causing all the bad behavior around the country. For years we thought people were to blame for being bad. We are beginning to see that it is not the people who are bad, but things. If we make it illegal to have a gun, then no one will be able to harm anyone else.

About 90 years ago Congress passed a law to prevent people from getting drunk. It was not the person who drank too much alcohol that was to blame for that person getting drunk, it was the fault of the alcohol. If you are not old to remember how this worked, there is plenty of literature on the subject of the success of the 18th Amendment in stopping people from getting drunk.

More recently we have seen how successful laws have been in stopping people from getting their brains all messed up by fooling around with heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs. A few years ago laws were passed to require people to fasten seat belts to prevent them from getting killed when they drove their car into a tree. It is all right to drive your car into a tree, but it is wrong to get killed if you do drive your car into a tree.

This law requiring the kids to be polite was a brave new answer to problems, but it really did not go far enough. If it is ever proposed again It should be expanded to include shoppers at the markets. For instance, if some shopper pushes his or her cart over to block another parked vehicle. Once I saw a woman do just that, then get into her car with a sign on the back bumper that read “I love Jesus.”

Any shopper with 21 items in the car that went to the check-out counter where the sign said that check-out station is only for those with 20 items or less should be sentenced to 10 days at hard labor. The check out person who serves the person with 21 items to be checked and violating the rule should also be punished, but that check-out person should be required to address the shopper as “sir” or “m’am.”

Now that it is being made clear that things and not people responsible for crimes the simple legislation would be a law requiring people to do everything they should do, and prohibiting them from doing the things they should not do.

Of course, every historian and biographer informs us that Jesse James would address all his victims as sir or m’am before he robbed them.

Trivia Time

More old-time radio trivia. Who lived at 79 Wista Vista? Answer to last question. Norris Goff was an actor who once played Gomer Pyle’s grandfather. But his most famous role was that of Abner Peabody on Lum and Abner.

Contact George Frasher at 337-238-3433, E-mail frasher@cebridge.net.