Friday has to come early for me this week.

Busybodies. Freaking busybodies.

The people who will intrude in other people's lives and tell them how to live their lives, even when that person is hurting NO ONE (or no one but themselves) with their choices. This news story of the little girl whose lunch was allegedly confiscated because a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, a box of apple juice, and a bag of potato chips aren't "nutritional" enough (and in return, her mom was forced to buy a school lunch, of which the girl ate three "chicken" nuggets - and I use the scare quotes deliberately, if the nuggets are like the cafeteria nuggets I've had).

I feel for that kid. If I had been her? I would have cried inconsolably for the rest of the day - I was a little rule-follower, and even when the rules made no sense, I tried to follow them. And I was also an unpopular kid, so I felt like the teachers were my only allies at school - and so, if I felt they turned against me by ratting me out to the Food Police...well. I probably would have begged my parents Never To Go Back To School Ever Again.

The thing is - when we're graduating kids who can't read, who can't show basic respect to another human being, and who can't even minimally take care of themselves - it's WAY overstepping bounds to criticize a lunch a kid's mom packed for her.

 There are so many OTHER busybodies in the world. I fully expect before my career ends, I will see myself forced to either submit my packed lunch for Health Inspection or be required to prove I exercise the amount of time I do in a day - under the guise of "Wellness." (Already, my health insurance company sends me a god-awful nannying "birthday" card reminding me of crap like, "If you're overweight, get your weight under control" and "eat lots of fruits and vegetables and less meat and sweets." And "move more, eat less." RAEG. Like I'm not smart enough to figure out that leading a healthy lifestyle is good for me. (And yeah, yeah - I know, there are people who probably AREN'T. But why harass me? I barely make my deductible by December, it's not like I'm a huge drain on their resources.) Oh, and of course there's the obligatory "limit stress." Well, if stress is the result of a thwarted desire to choke the living daylights out of some idiot who desperately deserves it, the health insurer is a little late on that one.

With all the health-nannying, food-nannying, exercise-nannying kids get, I would not be surprised if in five or ten years eating disorders among teens and young adults becomes even more common, and then people run around going, "How could this have happened? SOMETHING MUST BE DONE."

Also: exercise in the form of running around outside (like I used to do as a kid, and frankly, I was a pretty skinny kid) becomes a lot LESS fun when you have the President's wife coming on television to tell you you "should" be doing it.