Alphabetical order is a bunch of bullshit: a 5-year FLASHBACK blog!

(Originally posted November 14, 2007)

Whoever came up with this system was a fool.  Didn't he see the big flaw in it?  The same people go first every time!  First in line at graduation, first to pick their seats on the bus for the field trip, etc.  Totally unfair, it's complete crap.  People's names don't change unless they get married or enter the witness protection program or do some other strange thing.  You might as well go by order of birthdate or shoe size.  Better yet, pick people in order of body weight.  That at least fluctuates a little, and maybe some fat children would finally have to pay for their sweet lifestyle of eating Ho-Hos on the couch.

Jeffrey Dahmer.  John Wayne Gacy.  Ted Bundy.  David Berkowitz.  What do all these terrible people have in common?  Their last names are all near the beginning of the alphabet!  That is not coincidence, that is FACT.  Chances are they always had to pick their seats on the bus first, and then the other kids all deliberately picked away from them because they were such creeps and weirdos.  That turned them to violence, which is one of the drawbacks of alphabetical order.


In the interest of fairness I spent this past summer engineering a new, better system for deciding which kids should go in what sequence.  I call it the "Captain Dan Traditional Method of Fair and Square Selection in Regards to Seating and Other Crises."  ("Captrad" for short.)

Here's how it works:

Step 1: On a sheet of paper, assign each letter of the alphabet a different numerical value between 1 and 26.  (A=4, B=23, etc.)

Step 2: Have a friend or relative do the same, without looking at each other's papers.

Step 3: Add the numerical totals for each letter together and record them on a third sheet of paper, the "master sheet."

Step 4: Determine the numerical value of each child's last name by adding together the total value of all the letters, and then DIVIDE by the number of letters to determine the mean average.  (Kids with long last names won't gain an advantage that way, see?)

Step 5: Using icons on a felt board, line up the children according to your final calculations.  Flip a coin to determine whether the line begins with the highest-scoring last name (heads) or the lowest (tails).  If you don't have a coin, call a friend or neighbor you can trust and have them flip one for you.

Step 6: Rotate one person from the front of the line to the back depending on what day of the week it is.  (One person if it's Sunday, two people if it's Monday, etc.)

Step 7: Rotate two people from the front of the line to the back depending on what month of the year it is.  (Two people if it's January, four people if it's February, etc.)

Step 8: Record the results on paper.  You should now have a completely random list of all the children, by name.  This will be your new master sheet.  Discard the original master sheet to avoid any mix-ups.

Step 9: Enjoy your graduation!  (*or other competition, event, or evacuation)


Another thing you can do is draw the children's names from a hat.  But if you don't have any hats around, you can use Captrad.

(Captrad = patent pending, don't steal)


Click HERE.