Who is your daddy and what does he do?

I always liked that line. It's from Kindergarten Cop, with Arnold Shwarznegger, a movie about a cop trying to locate a mobster's son in a elementary school. "Who is your daddy and what does he do?" is the way he roundabout asks each kid to find out what their father does for a living without giving his motive away. The questioner is leading the questioned to get the desired answer without having the questioned to realize it.

Yesterday, I got the opportunity to talk with a couple of pastor friends of mine after playing some basketball (my team won all four games). My pastor was lamenting that the schools were doing away with some Christian and patriotic holidays. His argument was that this was Christian nation (I've argued against this before) and that those days should remain as they are.

I asked him what exactly was stopping him from keeping his kids home on those days. The answer is, of course, that absolutely nothing is keeping him from doing so.

Some might argue that the child would fall behind other children, but even in the worst cases it would be easy enough to find out what the other kids did that day and go over it sometime later. School don't usually teach any more than two to four hours of material a day so that shouldn't be a problem.

Imagine if all parents did that on those days. The school, realizing that it can't drag the children into class, would just close the school for that day.

So take the day off for what you want, when you want, and whatever you want. Who's going to stop you?