Mar 27 2009
Suspended!
My son was guilty of what must be a serious offense. Some kid in the lunch room threw something at him, and well, the lad is one to retaliate. He hurled the Teddy Graham cookie he was holding at the kid.
Unfortunately, the throw sailed on him and it struck an elderly lunch lady (who my son actually likes), in the chest. Apparently she was rushed to the nurse’s office with what can only be diagnosed as “a red mark on her collarbone area.”
Now, I’m not proud of this. I’ve since learned that the Principal himself caught this same son, only two weeks prior, about to throw something meant to be edible in the lunch room and stopped him before he certainly otherwise would have.
The kid is a good kid. You’d be proud to have him as your son. Except for this kind of junk he pulls from time to time. All in good fun. And bad behavior.
Here’s the thing. Guess what his punishment was? I was thinking it would be a day or two of detention. Maybe a one-day suspension.
Shows you how little I know. He was suspended for seven days. They also are citing the lad, which means he must appear before a magistrate (which I believe is some kind of judge) and may have to pay a fine of $400 and or do community service.
Now, my question to you is, “Does this punishment fit the crime?” Do you have similar stories?
Am I so out of touch? Any idea what I did as a kid? With this level of justice, I would probably be on Death Row with the junk I pulled. What about you?
My son is the same walking attitude I was in school. He recently was called out to the hall by his teacher to “discuss” a paper that he had not done right. Her intention was to make his feel bad about his grade dropping to a solid C. My son responded “So what you are saying is that I should feel suicidal because I am average. Oooooo what ever will I do I am “average”.
I am not sure which part is funnier, his teacher thinking his average score would bother him or that he silenced his teacher with his apathy toward being average.
This is definitely something I needed to read right now. I’m a senior in high school, (and although it wasn’t exactly the same as your son) I was suspended for 7 days as well.
I don’t know… I guess just reading that it happens to the best of kids has made me feel a lot better. I was pretty distraught about it, y’know, having this now go on college applications… oh boy. More stress!
But thanks for writing about this. We all go through some stuff, but some of us end up with harsher punishments than we’d like. But yeah, this really did help me.
Keep up the comedy!
And yes, Teddy Grahams are serious weapons in school nowadays
My 15 yr old son was caught with some friends off school grounds during school hours by a school security guard. My son got hot and decided to put his jacket in his back pack which made the security person think he was hiding something. The security guy asked them all to empty their pockets and backpacks (which our attorney later told him they could have refused) My son had a knife in his pocket. Not sure why…so even though he was off school campus the gave him a week of in school suspension (ISS) for having the knife. He had 4 failing classes and they told him if he doesn’t get those grades up while in ISS they he would keep him in there until he did. Well he refused to get the grades up or do any work in ISS (defiant) so by the time they were done with him 2 weeks in ISS had all failing grades (7 classes). Does the punishment fit the crime here? This was his first time ever skipping class. For the knife thing we had to go to a parole officer in our county who gave him a “warn and release” with no further obligations.