by Damon Knight
Oh god, how I do love that chocolate.
Ignore it. She just wants the attention.
Theresa’s bad behavior is now causing water to leak from her eyes. What a device. So simple, yet so effective. Fight it, fight it, ignore that tightening in your facial muscles, Murray, and turn her chair to the wall. That’s better.
Hello, wall. There you are again. Not quite as dirty as you were yesterday. They’ve cleaned off the heart-shaped brown mark. Too bad, not much to look at. Just shifting shadows of the people behind her back, having fun.
Theresa puts her thumb in her mouth to stifle the gasping sobs she feels inside; remembers, takes it out and wipes it on her dress. A hand comes around her and pops an M&M into her mouth.
I remembered, I remembered. Oh, I love that chocolate.
4. INGREDIENTS
Sugar, chocolate, com starch and syrup, cocoa butter, peanuts, emulsifier, salt, dextrin, artificial colors, artificial flavors, deuterium oxide. Fissionable core contains enriched uranium and plutonium with a hard candy coating. Net wt., .03 oz.
5. DIRECTIONS
Light fuse, place in client’s mouth, get away.
6. TIME-OUT
From Basic Behavior Mod: Semester One, Episode Five, “The Skinner versus the Non-Smiling Syndrome,” published by the Pennsylvania Institute for the Pre-Delinquent Child. Pulp, three-color process, third printing, 45 pages. Approved by the Comics Committee.
Panel 1: Angry Agnes is up to her old tricks. She is exhibiting undesirable behavior.
ANGRY AGNES: Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!
SKINNER: Darn it! There goes Angry Agnes again! When will she learn to be a happy citizen? I’m going to isolate her and “time-out”* this crying behavior without delay!
Crimestopper’s Notebook:
Time-out: Removing the client from the opportunity to get Positive Reinforcement.
Panel 2: The Skinner, Angry Agnes, and Happy Harry. The Skinner talks only to Harry, ignores Agnes.
Skinner: What a good boy you are being, Happy Harry! Look at your big smile! What a good, happy citizen Harry is. Look, everybody, look at how happy Happy Harry is. Here, Harry, have an M&M.
(Lookit # 1: Reinforce behavior you want.)
Happy Harry: I love M&Ms.
Angry Agnes: Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo! (This is no fun at all. Always before when I cried they reinforced my behavior. What am I doing wrong?)
Panel 3: Same cast. Agnes has extinguished her undesirable behavior.
Skinner: (She has extinguished her bad behavior! I must reward her without delay. I must reinforce her non-crying behavior.) Now, that’s a good citizen, Agnes. Let’s do that all the time, shall we? You know we all love you. All the skinners love you. Here’s an M&M.
Agnes: I love M&Ms. I’m a good girl. Good girls get M&Ms.
Harry: Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!
Skinner: (Oh, dam it! But I must not turn to him. I must not reward him.)
(Lookit #2: Ignore behavior you do not want.)
Time-out:
Remove the client from the opportunity to get positive reinforcement of bad behavior.
Client:
The clients are defined to be pre-delinquent children.
Pre-delinquent:
A child likely to become a delinquent. Most broadly, a child before he or she has committed any act which would be classified as delinquent. Or, a child before he or she has yet had time to think of delinquent acts to commit, before having had bad behavior reinforced. A child in an uncontrolled environment is well known to be capable of extreme delinquency; therefore all uncontrolled children are pre-delinquent.
Time-out:
The skinners come once a week to round up the pre-delinquent children. The doctors and nurses love them, with their merry yellow masks and their hearty handshakes for one and all.
Smile at them, and by George they’ll pop a sweet right into your mouth. Sort of takes you back, doesn’t it, the mouth-watering tang of a lemon drop from the skinner’s own hands. Of course we’re beyond all that now, of course. We’re adults now, and we know how to behave, and we don’t need the little bribes for being good. We’re mature.
Still, it does make you feel good, you know? Makes you want to smile.
Grinning, the skinners troop along the quiet white corridors of the hospital with the grinning doctors and nurses. Down to the pink and blue sour-sweet smells of the maternity ward where the tiny children are with their mothers. Sucking on the candy nipples, tasting the last drop of milk they will ever get.
Some of the mommies shed a tear. The skinners—smiling, smiling—turn their funny faces around until the mommies are laughing at the antics, then pop them an M&M. All smiles from ear to ear, the mommies hand over the little bundles, which are put in glass boxes.
The babies struggle a bit. The skinners hold them to see if they’ll cry. If they do, pop they go into the boxes. The boxes are soundproof, so the mommies won’t be disturbed.
On this long-ago day there is a problem mommy. She went to a public school. She was only rounded up and discovered to be pre-delinquent at the age of fifteen. She loves M&Ms, but she loves her baby, too. It’s a real problem. Poor mommy. She cries, and all the capering of the skinners cannot console her. She wants to stop crying in order to have an M&M, but she can’t.
So Terrible Theresa is pulled from a pink-cloud lazy dream and the nipple, and the warm muzzly nipple, it’s gone! She howls at once.
And poor dumb confused mommy, she howls back. Theresa’s bad behavior is reinforced something awful. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but mommy's crying!
She is popped into the box without an M&M, hungry and cross.
She howls for the longest time.
She is going to be a problem.
7. MORE PROBLEMS
DATE: 9/12
PROBLEM NUMBER: 13/3/2 target: Leftism
OBJECTIVES: Observe clients in the six-month-to-one-year age group. Select those with a tendency to favor the left hand. Resident will decrease left-orientation to zero by 9/14. plan: Client will be allowed to pick up objects at random, all placed on client’s right side. When client picks up the object with right hand, behavior will be reinforced with praise, M&Ms, and cuddling. When client picks up object with left hand, no reward will be forthcoming.
DATE: 5/27
PROBLEM NUMBER: 42/5/1 target: Homosexual Tendencies
OBJECTIVES: Resident will select clients with observed prehomosexual behavior, such as: (male) non-participation in athletic activities, crying behavior, interest in girls’ toys such as dolls, interest in reading or music, tenderness; (girls) aggression, poor appearance, squirming, assertiveness, friendliness to other girls, lack of interest for boys.
Plan: Client will be ignored when…
… hyperactivity, disruptiveness, nose-picking, thumb-sucking, laziness, inattentiveness, obscenity, disrespect, negativism, non-participation, solitarism, anti-sociality, excessive precociousness, “brown-nosing,” frowning behavior, showing-off, smart-assing, contradiction of the resident, anti-Americanism, disrespect for authority, hooliganism, anti-militarism, excessive originality, inventiveness, anti-Institutionality, curiosity, Non-Smiling Syndrome . . .
8. TIME-OUT IS CLIENT-CONTROLLED
Waves of sympathetic excitement are shuddering down the ether, tingling and charging the atmosphere of Ward 47 b, East Wing, National Behavioral Institute 3490, Hershey, Pennsylvania. Murray the skinner feels it. The children bathe in it. Even Terrible Theresa feels it.
B. T. the skinner is on his way, what goodies does he have for good little boys and girls today?
Murray is in command. He is gratified to see that the excitement is carefully restrained. Only a few squirmers here and there, and he carefully makes note of names and times. The flow charts are flowing, the lessons are going, and only the children’s salivary glands are out of control. There is sucking-in of breath, the sound of slurping.
Theresa has the itches. Down there in that bothersome itchy
old pee-pee, darn it, and it just won’t stop. Keep your hands in your lap, Theresa, and you’ll get an M&M if only you’ll stop squirming. But that's where the problem is, dam it!
Murray has conscientiously given her a second M&M when her snuffling crying behavior extinguished. But still she sits, staring at the wall, removed from the opportunity for positive reinforcement. Cry away, cry-baby, you won’t get any sympathy from us. We reward happy behaviors. Smile, Theresa! It’s a beautiful day.
(Count the thumb tack holes on the patch of white wall twenty-five twenty-six twenty-nine. That’s it. Think about B.T. the skinner. Count the holes again fifteen seventeen.) Squirm.
Darn it!
I gotta scratch, I just gotta scratch!
Ooooooh, that’s much better. I wonder if Murray saw?
The door bursts open. It’s B.T., gibbering and jabbering, seven-foot-tall clown with a spinning face. The class is electrified, but sits stone-still. Some of them are drooling.
“Hi, B.T. . . .” Billy begins, and is shocked as he realizes that he is the only one on his feet, waving. He has forgotten himself. He only thought that since Murray had been yelling and he had yelled back and he did get his M&M . . .
“Billy, you shouldn’t speak out of turn,” says Murray. He is secretly pleased that this embarrassing thing has happened to this particular client, who did raise his voice earlier and Murray had forgotten to do anything because his face was hurting on account of Theresa. Now his head is hurting. He rubs the puckered white scar on his forehead.
“All right, class. You may go see B.T.”
“And how are all my little sixth-graders doing today?” B.T. asks, amusing the six-year-olds who cluster around him giggling at his winsome two-step.
“Tell us a story, B.T.”
“Give us some candy, B.T.”
“Tell us about the hippie in the hill.”
Theresa is sitting ramrod-straight on her personal throne, straight and still. Quick as a wink, happy to be able to so quickly reward such good behavior, Murray pops her an M&M and tells her to go see B.T.
Lickety-split. Terrible Theresa is off her stool and racing to join the other moppets at B.T.’s feet. The smile on her face is an inspiring thing to see. Her hands are clasped safely out of harm’s way.
Murray massages the headache, which has spread to his temples.
It is good to see Theresa successfully internalizing her controls. Maybe he won’t have to increase her dosage of dexies, after all. Maybe she’ll take her fate in her own hands, minimize her time-outs, and become a good citizen. Time is short. Only this morning, Lobey the Needle came calling, asking about Theresa. Had she been a good girl?
The scar on Murray’s forehead is throbbing.
9. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Sacramento Bee, February 4, 1977:
… knows we have to find some way to get these little hooligans off the street. I favor prisons, myself. But do you know what they’re doing in the schools these days? Listen to this. They’re giving the kids sweets when they’re good.
This is supposed to lower the crime rate? This is supposed to give these kids some sense of moral right and wrong? In my day, when we were bad we got a switching, and no fooling around with “behavior reinforcement.”
Wise up!
CONCERNED TAXPAYER
Time, September 5, 1979:
. .. your excellent and thought-provoking article on the trend to behaviorism in the public schools.
I thought my experience might shed some light on the disturbing elements of these techniques, and others, which seem to work so well in a practical sense. I work as a secretary in a Midwestern public school. Every day dozens of permanent records pass over my desk, and it has begun to frighten me. I see children marked down as potential homosexuals for the most insignificant acts. I see students classified as troublemakers for having the temerity to question the teacher’s statements on politics, history, or anything at all. Almost fifteen percent of the children here are taking daily doses of Ritalin or Dexedrine because they’ve been diagnosed as hyperactive.
This is something we, as parents and other concerned adults, should keep a wary eye on. We must have the courage to stand up and fight this sort of pettiness.
Please don’t print my name.
(Name withheld)
Atlanta Constitution, May 17, 1982:
. . . came home from school today and I found out she’s been classified as a pre-delinquent child. They want to take her and put her in one of these special institutions that have sprung up all over the country.
They say she was crying in class. Her grandmother died the day before, and that’s why she was upset. I tried to explain this, but they said it was all the more reason they needed to take her and help her before this unpleasant experience could permanently scar her personality.
I don’t know what to do.
H. B. SWEENEY
Last Ditch, newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Resisters, no date:
… say that Friday’s the day. Could be, but that won’t keep me from keeping my eyes open on Thursday!
The yellowfaces have been massing in the canyon all week, that’s certain. They want your kids, fellow citizens, and they mean to have them one way or another. And for one time they’re right. If there was ever a kid who’s a genuine pre-delinquent, it was my Tommy two years ago. Since then he’s helped me kill three yellowfaces.
I’ve found that if you aim for that little set-screw in the middle that holds the mask onto the pivot, you get the best results. I don’t know what’s behind them masks, men or what. I do know that if you put a slug through that screw, they go down and I ain’t seen one get up yet.
Keep your powder dry, neighbors. And don’t fire till you hear ’em yell “smile!”
NASTY NATHAN
10. LOBEY THE NEEDLE
Lobey the Needle whispers down the corridors. The excitement of B.T.’s visit has gone down a bit, though it still eddies and flutters in the comers like empty candy wrappers stirred by a breeze. Lobey’s tread is silent. Lobey is a friend of the children, but he brings no candy. He doesn’t visit once a week but is always around, standing in the back of the room, walking down the far end of the hall, suddenly in front of you and patting you on the head when you round a comer. His hands are gentle.
He is putting your soul in an analytical balance, weighing your progress. He is taking the measure of your frontal lobes. Feel his gentle hands caress your forehead. Isn’t Lobey a swell guy?
Murray leaves his clients bent over their lessons and meets Lobey in the hallway.
“Good to see you, Murray.” His hands touch Murray’s scar, testing gently. It is not an old scar.
“Good to see you, Lobey.” Murray is achingly happy to see Lobey, his old friend. His face aches. It was Lobey who made Murray into a good citizen. Before, Murray had been Terrible. He had been brought up in the hippie-hills with his crazy mommy. There was nothing to do but operate, get a blank slate to draw on. Murray’s bad behavior had been reinforced all his life and he was apt to say the damdest things.
“I won’t bother you, Murray. I just want to look in on Theresa. How has she been?”
He peeks into the open doorway and is surprised to see Theresa sitting like a little angel in her chair, biting the end of her tongue as she struggles to make her pencil do what Murray wants it to do. Theresa is being a good girl. She is trying awfully hard.
“Theresa’s been good today,” Murray says, and immediately his face hurts. Those rebellious muscles are trying to pull the corners of his mouth down, trying to make him f-n. Oh, come on now, Murray, you’re a grownup now, you can face the word. Frown. You’re trying not to frown. Sweat pops on his brow at the closeness of his attempted evasion. What are you trying to do, dummy, with all those watchbirds all over the walls? Lie? No, it couldn’t have been that. Murray is long past that.
“She was in trouble this morning, but she got much better when B.T. showed up. She’s been a perfect angel ever since.”
“So happy to hear it. I’ll need your final report next week, Murray. She’s seven today, and we have to decide.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be all right. In this day and age … oh, no. She won’t need you. She’ll make it on her own, you’ll see.” Murray dares a grin. “You’re getting out of date, Lobey.”
Lobey chuckles, aware that Murray is right. Lobey is, after all, only a specially trained skinner.
“Maybe you’re right, Murray. I’ve already handled all the grownup holdouts. There’s only their children, now. Theresa’s mommy was one of those, wasn’t she?”
Throb in the temple, ache in the gut.
“Yes, she was.”
“Thought I heard that you knew her.” Lobey is watching. His needle is always ready. Sometimes two, three, four times aren’t enough. It’s no good to make vegetable goulash out of frontal lobes; you must be more subtle, and therein lies the danger.
“Me? I don’t think so. But you’d know better than I, wouldn’t you?” Murray laughs, the muscles around his mouth are doing a spastic dance.
“Guess I would, at that.” Lobey laughs. “Have a nice day, Murray.”
“And a nice day to you, Lobey.”
Theresa has dropped her pencil. She is staring out the window at the amorphous clouds of cotton-candy castles.
11. CATCH THEM BEING GOOD
Theresa sits in her dormitory room, trying not to be terrible. It’s hard, when you’re six years old and want to kick up your heels, scratch where it itches, maybe sing a silly song now and then.
The watchbird on the wall is mooning at her with fried-egg eyes. He is disappointed. Not frowning, you see, but you haven’t done much lately to cheer the little fellow up, Terrible Theresa. Isn’t it wonderful when he’s smiling at you? She remembers those rare days when she was as good as gold and when she returned to her room there was a smile on the watchbird’s face.