February 9, 2006 - Thursday
Today was the 100th day of classes at Harry's school and all the kindergartners were asked to bring in 100 pieces of something to count and sort and so forth. Last night we struggled to find 100 things and ended up counting out 100 small, expired bullet shells that I had kept as a souvenir from my days on the high school team. Admittedly, Harry's mother and I were a little leery about sending bullet shells to school, but they are quite harmless and Harry thinks there cool, of course. And we only had 78 washers to go with a big magnet and it just didn't seem right to send a hundred pennies for some reason.

Unfortunately, the school was not so open-minded about bullet shells in the classroom and I suppose in hindsight it really wasn't a very smart idea at all. Harry's mother got a call that demanded that we go in and speak with the Assistant Principle and since I'm local during the day, I'm the one who went. It was a fairly benign conversion after it was clear where these bullet shells were from and why Harry had them, but I guess having anything related to guns in a school is a big problem and they ended up suspending Harry for the rest of the day. She said things like "what if one of the shells was dangerous" a couple of times and it's still not absolutely clear to me that she understood that they were not. Although I'll concede that having a live bullet mixed in with shells would not be out of the question in grand scheme of things. The bottom line was that policy, apparently, dictated that the student should be suspended and the Assistant Principle "had no choice" in the matter.

(That kind of thinking is something I have a very hard time with in general and particularly in a school where kids should be encouraged think creative and not be slaves to regimented thinking. Ironically, I've been following the news over just the last couple of days about a kindergartner across the state who got suspended for "sexual harassment" because he apparently touched a girl on the bare section of her back below her shirt and above her pants. The boys mother, quite rightly, was furious that a kindergartner should ever have to think about what "sexual harassment" meant. But it was policy and the principle was just following policy. OK, so bullet shells in a school aren't really the same thing, but why would Harry need to leave school?)

Harry was thrilled to see me and have me take him home when the rest of his class went to lunch, but it didn't take long for him to ask why I was picking him up for "early dismissal." I told him that I had needed to go to the principle's office (he's already learn the lore of the "principle's office" as a bad place to need to go). I had to explain that while the bullet shells were not dangerous, sometimes perceptions are more important than what's really true. For some people, the idea of "bullets" is a scary thing and that bullet shells seemed to be a scary thing. He seemed to understand.

Apparently many other kids brought pennies.


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