Your Premanent Record

Story telling fascinates me. I love the way Quentin Tarantino tells a story. He breaks things into bits and takes things out of context that are later given context. When does the story start? Things are usually not completely linear. You actually have to take things out of order to make them make more sense. Who wants to read something or watch something in real time? You take out the extraneous stuff unless it is part of the story. Sometimes eating breakfast in your underwear is part of the story and tells you something about the character and sometimes it's just eating breakfast in your underwear.

Mary got suspended from school, that's one place to start the story. And then I would tell you that it was for kicking someone in the knee so badly that he needed to go to the doctor.

And then I could tell you that this is someone who has been harassing her for literally years.
I could tell you that my kid has never been in trouble like this before this year. And that when the principal called me yesterday and told me there was a group of girls and a boy involved that I immediately guessed who the girls were and who the boy was (I actually knew it would be one of two boys who just will not leave her alone.). And I was right.

I could tell you about a girl that has wormed her way into my daughter's life this year and I could describe the circles and the whispering and the notes and that I got a call a few months ago about note passing that got so bad that the girl got in school suspension and my daughter nearly got in school suspension. I could tell you that I like this girl and her parents but that alarms literally go off in the back of my head when I see her around my daughter. Not because she hurts my daughter, but because she encourages behavior that I don't think my daughter would otherwise initiate. And I base that on Mary's history.

So with this, and there's more of course, we are still at the beginning of the story which is that my kid got suspended for kicking another student in the knee.

We got up early, went to the school at 8 and met with the principal, vice principal and classroom teacher who was there when this all happened yesterday.

You could take things out of context and just have the incident that happened yesterday after school, or you can take the history of this kid and that kid and look at things with the bigger picture. The story can be the five minutes after school or it can be the five years these kids have been in school together. The school looked at the story in a five year context and for that reason the suspension is only a day and not three days or five days or a disenrollment at the school that I got special permission for my kids to attend.

On our way out we passed Mary's friend and her dad the soccer coach. They were there to talk to the principal too. He looked genuinely surprised to see us there.

"Practicing your soccer?" he asked Mary.

Well, her kicking anyway, I thought to myself.

"So let me get this straight," my little delinquent said after we left the school and went to a coffee shop, "I get suspended for kicking a boy who won't leave me alone, and you take me out for a muffin and hot chocolate."

"Well, yeah, I guess so," I said. I have never understood suspension. How is not going to school a punishment exactly?

Her dad and I sat over coffee with her and figured out how we could work today out and her dad informed her that she was spending her day on school work and an apology letter. I told her that her slumber party with her friend - the one who contributed to the problem yesterday - was now canceled.

And, of course, the story is not over.