Life Copies Satire

The Onion, 19 August 1997:

At the group's annual convention Sunday, members of the National Education Association called for the formation of a nationwide coalition of parents, teachers and political leaders to address a rapidly growing problem: the alarmingly low quality of teenage suicide notes across the U.S.

In the convention's keynote address, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley said America must renew its commitment to grammar, spelling and writing skills, calling the marked improvement of teen suicide prose "the nation's number one educational priority."

"Not three days ago I met with the parents of a young man who chose to take his own life," Riley said. "I was shocked by what I saw: a note that read simply, 'Im gonna blo my head of.' This sort of syntax is understandable coming from a first- or second-grader, but from a 17-year-old it is downright appalling," Riley said. "What do you tell the parents in a situation like that? By all outward appearances, this seemed like a normal child. The poor parents had no idea their son's writing skills were that poor."

Daily Mail, 21 June 2012:

A school has apologised after a teenage boy was asked to produce a handwritten note in a writing class which his parents thought was a suicide letter.

Wesley Walker, 14, was told by teachers to imagine he only had a few days to live through terminal illness, and to write a letter which he should then take home to his parents.

But when the schoolboy produced the handwritten note which said he wanted to 'say goodbye' before disappearing to his bedroom, his mother thought he had become suicidal.