Are they allergic to staples? A meditation

Hello fellow miserians. It is I, Maybelle from Vacaville, and I must vent the spleen.

When did students become allergic to staples? It's not often the assignments in my course require more than one page, but when they do, the students do the following:

• Get huffy if "I" don't bring a stapler to the class.
• Tear the corner half an inch from the margin, as if it will keep the papers together.
• Origami fold the corner (usually folding it back, but sometimes it can start looking like a crane!).
• A band-aid.
• Use bobbypins, most often with hairs still attached <shudder>.
• Sometimes scrounge a paper clip.

How is a staple so hard to come by? Ostensibly the students have had upwards of a week to do this assignment. Has there been a war on staplers, much like the war on water at airports? Are staplers being confiscated when they first move in to the dorms?

For pure hyperbolic joy (and to keep from screaming at them), I imagine the following: "Hold it right there! For student safety, ResLife no longer allows staplers to be kept in the dorms. You must register them with campus police."

When I was in that pissing pool of undergrad not so long ago, an assignment wasn't considered complete unless it was stapled at the corner. I carried a mini-stapler with me, as did most of my peers. Hell, they hand out FREE mini-staplers at the big "Welcome Back" shindig EVERY YEAR.

What happened?

I think we allowed the next round of precious little flakes to not get their feelings hurt. We let them learn helplessness. They are incapable of empathy, critical thought, or planning ahead. We have made them sheep. Dumb, thoughtless staple-allergic sheep.

The flakes can't staple two pieces of paper together. They get angry when I try and insist. They don't respect me, or college, or learning. They're here to get a piece of paper that says they are qualified for middle management, and, hopefuly, middle class.

If they can't staple two pieces of paper together without giving me an attitude, I seriously doubt they'll be able to keep their middle class "I got here because I paid for my college degree" job in this buyer's market of employment.

This is a meditation. No need for comments, so they have been turned off. Please, meditate on the state of your students' staple allergy and its wider implication for society. Sure they say "It's just a staple," but really it means "I can't be bothered to follow any rules or conventions, suck it."