In an earlier post I chronicled being with my son in the building next door to where the Virginia Tech shootings were taking place back in April 2007.   The event did not really upset us.  We both felt safe and sound during the whole thing.  It was somewhat surreal, actually.  People to whom we told the story always seemed more upset by it than we were.

 And then in May 2008 I had a flood of emotions come roaring back about the damn thing based largely on the idiocy of my son's high school administrators.

 The child in question fits the definition of middle child to a tee.  Kind, gentle, considerate, a peace maker.  He is an accomplished Western Reiner, an apprentice farrier, in honors classes in high school, and now in an Army ROTC program.  He was hell bent on simply enlisting before relenting on ROTC.  He admits he is only doing it to please his parents.  I'm ok with that.  It keeps him out of harm's way for four more years as far as I am concerned, and it gives him a subsidized education in exchange for his service his country.

So he's a good kid, even if I am his father. 

He had a rather quirky math teacher for his AP calculus class.  Guy liked to be the kiddies' pal and had a rather volatile relationship with the administration as a result of his overly friendly ways.  Early in the school year in the fall of 2007 he opined aloud about thinking it would be funny if students pelted a teacher with powdered donuts as a senior prank.

This statement stuck with my son.

 So, in May of his senior year, my son and three of his friends from his AP calculus class (read nerds who could be extras on the set of The Big Bang Theory) decided they would pull this prank on this teacher.  My son was the ring leader.  He spoke to the teacher on the school day before the prank took place to warn him and to get his tacit approval.  He bought the boxes of powdered donuts and came up with the idea of wearing faceless Halloween masks to boot.

So into the class they go with their masks.  Four kids each with a dozen donuts.  They nailed the teacher with them, and then lobbed a few easy ones to kids who had called out for them because they were hungry.  It was all over in about 20 seconds.

 Out in the hallway, the teacher became irate.  When the class was over, these four kids went back to the classroom to clean it up.  The teacher was hostile, talking about saving things for evidence.

 Suffice to say his attitude had changed.

So that afternoon my wife gets a call from the administration.  Yes, she tells them, we knew about it.  Did the teacher tell you he was forewarned, she asks.  The male assistant principal, who knew my wife from her stints as both a substitute teacher in the school and as a former school committee member, informs her that it is a serious offense given that my son assaulted a teacher.

 This gets my wife's back up.  And, trust me, you do not want to see this.  You want to run and hide and stay out of her way.  Honest.  It can be ugly.

So I get sucked into this thing.  I am to talk to the administration during the day while she is teaching at a different high school.  As I am being handed off the "assignment," I am also told that the assistant principal was not at all pleased with what he and the other assistant principal considered to be my son's irreverent attitude.

 I am told this information with a look that screams, "Apple, tree, distance, you ASSHOLE!"

I slink away.  Guilty as charged.

The next step in the process happens to be talking to the perfect middle child upon his return home.  He is a mix of frustration and hurt.  He's hurt by the fact he went to a teacher whom he thought a friend and whom he thought was in on the prank, asked for approval, got it -- or so he thought -- and was betrayed.  He is frustrated by what he considers the idiocy and over reaction of the administration.

I bring up rather sheepishly the comment about his irreverent attitude while my wife glares at me. 

He tells me the issue was with the masks.  The female assistant principal was upset by this.  She claimed that coming in with masks was inappropriate and unduly alarming to the students in the classroom.  For a split second they could have thought they were under an attack.  Did these insensitive donut throwers not remember Columbine or Virginia Tech?

I explode.  "Are you fucking kidding me?" I yell.  He looks at me and says, "Well I looked at her and said, Yeah, I know, I was there.'"

By his inflection, I can tell he also likely threw in an eye roll to add insult to injury.

Apparently the female assistant principal took exception to that and started in on my son before being interrupted by the male assistant principal who had talked about my son's experience with him after I had written a column about it in the local newspaper when we returned from the college tour.  (The assistant principal's gender matters little other than as a way not to use names and to keep them straight, ok?)

So needless to say this got my tail up.  On a nine member school committee, I know five of them very well, working on campaigns to elect three of them.  I decided on calling one who had been an adversary before I moved from one town to another in the regional district.  We now saw eye to eye, and I knew this guy to have been on the school committee for over 20 years.  I figure he was a good source for this.

He, too, was a little incredulous.  He also claimed to admire my restraint. 

Believe it or not, I had some.  My son had cut a study hall and was roaming the halls improperly.  Throwing donuts is not a condonable offense.  He deserved punishment.

 He did not, however, deserve to have the terms assault, Columbine, or Virginia Tech associated with what he did.  I was not in any way, shape, or form, going to sit idly by and have that analogy stand. 

I was prepared to be an incredible asshole about this.  I knew a very obstinate lawyer who had sued the school district on several occasions whom I contacted immediately.  This Harvard educated bomb thrower was in the wings ready to agitate pro bono just for the sport of it.  I let my long tenured school committee member know this.

I also had a rather protracted and tense phone discussion with the female assistant principal.  I called her rather than the male one given she was the one throwing around the terms Columbine and Virginia Tech.  I was one pissed off parent.  With four kids, I have had my share of talks with administrators for transgressions my little devil spawn have perpetrated on the unwitting innocents in their classes.  I have bitten my tongue at some over reactions and some ridiculous rulings based on having respect for the profession and for feeling their pain in a litigious society.

 But on this one, I was ready to be litigious as hell.  I was not having my son's donut tossing equated to a morning I endured watching a true tragedy.  I did not want the prank demonized nor did I want those tragedies trivialized.

 I was pissed off.  Hell, I am pissed off again just typing this out.

I got off the phone with the female assistant principal and stewed.  The teacher was taking the next day off as planned, so no action was to be taken.  It was in limbo and weighing a bit on my son, but not too terribly bad as kids in the school were giving him accolades for creativity.

The next day my son came home from school to say both assistant principals had changed their tunes and were a lot nicer.  Later that afternoon the long tenured school committee member called to ask me if I had heard anything yet.  I admitted that I had not, but that my son had mentioned a definite lightening of the mood among the administrators. 

The school committee member sighed and mentioned simply that back in the old days the high school administration would have had enough forethought to call the superintendent of schools with a heads up whenever one of the little darlings of an elected official got into a jam, particularly when it was an elected official publicly supportive and helpful with school funding issues.

In short, the school committee member dropped a dime to the superintendent on my son's behalf.

At the end of the day, my son served a couple of days of in-house suspension and had a letter put in his personal file.  It was a letter that I insisted be read to me over the phone before it went into that file with it made quite clear to the administrator in charge of writing said letter that I would pursue legal action if I was not satisfied with its tenor and tone.

I realize I over reacted.  Even if the word "assault" had appeared, it would not have mattered a damn in the overall scheme of things.  My son's life would be no different either way it was worded.

But it just stuck in my craw that administrators fearing an adverse response over anything see fit to over react in order to forestall the feared storming of the gates by irate parents with pitchforks and torches.  Their fear, quite clearly, was some parent of a kid in that classroom coming in and arguing that their child had been traumatized.  So they assume the worst that they could face in terms of parental complaint and map that back onto the incident when disciplining the perpetrators.  Schools do not have the stones to say, "Mrs. Jones you are over reacting."  They do not push back on parents.  Instead they assume the worst and plan accordingly.  Chicken Little parents rule the day.

So perhaps I am just as bad.  I likely over reacted.  But I am sorry.  Throwing donuts at a teacher and lobbing them to hungry students is not on a par with Virginia Tech.  I heard the gun fire.  I saw the kids crawling away after jumping out of the second floor windows, and I saw the ambulances lined up around noon time to cart away the dead.

I would do it all over again if I had to, only I am not sure I would be as verbally restrained as I was the first time.  I mean, I am older and crankier.

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