4-Year-Old Boy Recommended for Counter-Terrorism Program After Saying 'Cooker Bomb' Instead of 'Cucumber'
Everything is dangerous.
A 4-year-old boy who mispronounced the word "cucumber" as "cooker bomb" so freaked out his pre-school teachers that they recommended him for a de-radicalization program.
This happened in Britain, where nursery staff clearly couldn't keep a stiff upper lip when faced with all the horror that is a pre-schooler with pronunciation problems. In their defense, it wasn't just the way the boy garbled the name of the salad staple. He had also drawn a stick figure of a man cutting that vegetable with a giant knife.
No wonder they wanted to ship him off to the counter-terrorism brigade! That's two counts against the radical little rugrat.
As we know very well in America, even the drawing of a weapon can be considered a weapon. Remember the boy with autism who drew a Wile E Coyote-type of bomb (at home) and was suspended? So we can hardly blame the Brits, whose educators have been instructed to report any and all "extremist" behavior to the authorities. For what is more extremist than a boy who draws a stick man (really, mostly a stick-head) cutting a cucumber?
The boy's mother was so upset that she waited months to public about the incident, though it occurred in November, according to the Telegraph. That paper also reports that she engaged in this exchange with the pre-school staff:
"I said: 'When you look at me, from where do I look like a terrorist?' and she [staff member] said: 'Well, did Jimmy Savile look like a paedophile?'" the mother told the newspaper.
So there you have it: If you look and act like a terrorist, naturally you become a suspect. But if you don't look or act like a terrorist—if, in fact, you look like a kid who's not about to win any awards for art or articulation—naturally you become a suspect, too.
Which means we are all suspects. Even preschoolers.