Constitutional Essay
This is installment #18 in my several-part series, Shit I Wrote a While Ago. This piece comes from 8th grade. Our task was “to select one of the amendments and write an essay about how life in America would be different if we did not have that amendment.” Naturally, I chose our most important amendment, the 3rd. From 1999.
Constitutional Essay
The Third Amendment says, “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Most people probably don’t think about this one that much. People think about their rights of freesom, speech, religion, press, and assembly; and they thin about women’s right to vote, but not too many people stop and say, “Gee, I’m sure glad the government isn’t forcing me to house soldiers.”
Maybe they should think about it, though. Imagine if armies stayed in people’s houses instead of in barracks. It might sound kind of crazy, but really, just imagine it: You walk into your house from a long day at school. Billy from the Navy is in the kitchen eating all the food in the refrigerator. Since the government forced his residence upon your family, you’ve had to buy twice as much food every week to fill his bottomless pit of a stomach. Then there’s the extra wing you had to add onnto your house so he could have separate rooms for himself. Your family has had to give up many luxuries so you would have the money to pay for all the changes you’ve had to make since Billy came to stay with you. The worst of it is that you live in South Dakota. The nearest ocean is more than a thousand miles away, so Billy hardly ever actually goes to the naval base.
That’s how it could be. It would be awful. People would have to feed the soldiers, so they would have to buy a lot more food. They would also have to have bigger houses so the soldiers would have a place to stay. The standard of living for the whole country would be lowered. Homeless people would join the military so they could get free food and a place to live. Of course, if there was a war, no one would have to be drafted, and there would be a lot less homeless people. The military forces also wouldn’t have to give out scholarships to try to get people to join, because all the homeless people would just join. Even though there would be some good points, the bad points would still override them.
The main point is, people would have no privacy. The government could send an entire army to your house and you couldn’t do a thing about it. Just be happy that they can’t do that, thanks to the Third Amendment. So the next time you hear someone use the phrase, “enough food to feed an army,” be glad you don’t actually have to.
Started promisingly enough, got ridiculous towards the middle-end, with all the assumptions made about the homeless, then became cheesy and sloppy in the conclusion. D+
