Daddy Days: A modest municipal complaint

I’ve got a bone to pick with the city of Pflugerville. By its actions, it has forever changed, reduced and limited my children’s future potential. And it’s doing it to all the other children growing up in the city limits, too.

We all know that educating the next generation is of vital importance, and though this issue is at heart an educational one, our municipality not only dismisses it, it doubles down on promulgating its error.

And, to be clear, this is an issue with the city, not with the Pflugerville school district. We homeschool and don’t have much involvement with the school system, but I’ll tell you their students are being impacted even worse than ours are.

It’s hard to put into words the scope of what the city has stolen from its youth. It’s been doing it for more than 150 years! And it’s time to call out the city leaders and hold them accountable for this ongoing dereliction of duty and blight on our children’s futures.

Ok, so here it is. I’m just going to say it. None of my kids are ever going to win a spelling bee. And it’s all Pflugerville’s fault!

One of the boys was looking at the word “from” and said, “I keep thinking words that start with F should start with a P.” I wonder where he got that idea, Pflugerville?

Perhaps from the Pfarmers Market or the Pfreeze Pflop? Maybe it was Pfetch a Ride, Deutchen Pfest or the Pfab lab at the library? Or the Pfamily Pfish, Pfamily Pfloat, Pfestival of Lights, or Pfestive Movie night events? Maybe it’s all the signage and communication reminding us to pfind out more here, not to pforget, to be pfriendly, or to have pfun.

They say kids learning to read will learn from signs and words in their environment. Well, if your environment is Pflugerville, you’ll learn from signs like: Pfast Lube, Pfast Car Wash, The Pfield, Pfinesse, The Pfoundation, the Pflea Market, and The Pflag.

I can just imagine it. After years of preparation, one of the boys works his way into the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And then, at some pivotal moment, his word is fructification, flagitiousness or feuilleton, and he starts, “P” -- the buzzer sounds. Wrong. Disqualified. Ruined!

And it’s all the city’s pfault.

This is, of course, all in jest. Pflugerville is named after farmer Henry Pfluger and the spelling reflects his German roots as opposed to the phonetic mistake I made it out to be (pfluger means plowman in German). The unique Pf spelling that the city government and many businesses riff off of is a feature, not a bug, of the town’s charm.

Does the city maybe overdo it with the Pf stuff sometimes? Perhaps. But you know what? I’m pfine with it.

Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their six sons. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Daddy Days: A modest municipal complaint