The Strongest Link

I breath a sweet sigh of satisfaction. I was in a foul mood and pestered by annoyingly good stories. I had nothing scathing, nothing bad to say about them. Finally, something I can really dig my teeth into. The Strongest Link, right from the outset this story is delightfully irritating. Ripping off a bad a game show from the 90's that only remained in our collective memories because of a cheesy tagline is in no way, shape or form a good place to start a story from. But I suppose lowering our expectations to then surprise us with a fantastic story, or at least make a half decent story seem better, is sort of noble.
Sadly The Strongest Link achieves neither. It is the annoying punchline that you can see coming from a mile away. The moral heavy, humor light, or in this case devoid, answer to a question no one asked. Have you ever been talking to someone older than you who naturally assumes you know nothing, possibly a teacher or a grandparent or a parent, when they decide, in a vein attempt to connect with you, that telling a horrible joke to teach you lesson about something no one needs a lesson on is a good idea. That feeling of being pinned down by someone's good intentions and irritatingly holier than thou attitude. That's what reading this story felt like. It felt like being pinned down, unable to believe that someone would actually take the time to write that every part of the sentence is very important (try to imagine me speaking with an annoying voice to highlight the fact that I find this annoying). The fact that someone could think that children would like this is what's wrong with school today. Dynamic teaching requires trust, trust that the audience is capable of thought. Teachers, don't patronize your students, it's only insulting. They will learn to match expectations, no matter how low or high those expectations are. The expectations of whomever is the author of Short Story Blog are so very low it's kind of sad. No intelligence can grow from this story. No wisdom can be gained or learned because he, or she, is not allowing his audience to learn for themselves, everything is there. Nothing more can be said about it.