A long time ago, I graduated from Appomattox County High School. Things were simpler then. Not better, but simpler. Maybe different is the right word. This was before the horrors of Columbine, before the War on Terror, before internet bullying, and before students had to check in and out by swiping cards. The thought of asking public school students to use their fingerprints to check in and out of school was unconscionable—even in cheap science fiction.

Nowadays, people seem to accept happily that when they carry their smartphones, they can be found by anybody who really wants to know where they are. Twenty years ago, people were horrified at the idea that someone could implant a microchip into a pet. Consider the information we give away just to use the internet…forget about it. I keep a piece of electrical tape over my webcam. I assume that every keystroke I make can be monitored. (Hi there.)

Pardon me for being dismayed that the local newspaper, The Times-Virginian, had a front-page article called “Fingerprint Scanner Helps Document Students’ Attendance.” The article, by Stephanie James, said that the fingerprint scan is currently optional, but the mandatory cards have been in use for the past two years. When students scan a fingerprint or swipe a card, their picture and name shows up on a laptop screen. The article states that the program “is used to record a student’s attendance, and can be used to reveal if a student is cutting class.” Parents can sign up to receive e-mail or text alerts if their child is truant.

Hell, some of my best memories of high school are from days I played hooky. One time, my friend Graham and I ditched school and spent the day at his house. We played guitar, smoked cigarettes, and ran around on his roof. Those were the days before the public could wrap their minds around the very concept of caller ID—we were free to make any prank calls we wanted. One time, my friend Tony and I skipped school, and I drove my big red pickup to the high school one county over. There were some girls there that we liked. During that day, we were parked in a wooded area for some reason, and my nose started to bleed something terrible. On the senior class’s skip day, a cool guy had a lot of land and a small lake on his property. I had a few beers, wrote some embarrassing things in people’s yearbooks (forgive me!), and swam a lot. That day when I got home, the folks had decided it would be fun to go swimming at the big state park. I was miserable.