TNSTAAFL
There are a few phone numbers that strike dread into the heart of a working parent. Chief among them, perhaps just below “emergency room” and slightly above “unknown caller”, is the school.
When the elementary school’s number flashes on my screen during business hours, I brace myself for calamity: fever, head lice, or mysterious injuries sustained during recess. Imagination can be cruel.
But this school of ours, bless its earnest heart, also traffics in virtue. They have something called “The Good News Call”—a program in which small saints, caught mid-goodness, are escorted to the principal’s office, photographed, and permitted to phone home with their triumphant news. I’ve received a handful of these calls over the years. They’re usually delivered in the bright morning hours, when the day still holds promise, and my child’s voice brims with righteousness as I rush between meetings.
But at one o’clock, the school’s number illuminated my phone. Too late in the day for good news.
The assistant principal’s voice was of the grave and trembling sort reserved for great misdeeds. “Your son,” she began, “has had… an incident.”
My stomach dropped. I imagined all manner of horror.
“There’s been an act of vandalism,” she declared, the phrase heavy with bureaucratic sorrow. She went on to reassure me that the school no longer resorted to severe measures like suspension. His punishment would fit the crime. “He’ll be doing cafeteria service until the debt is repaid.”
“Vandalism?” I repeated, half in disbelief, half in curiosity. “What sort of vandalism?”
She paused—a pause so pregnant I considered sending flowers.
“I’ll let him explain,” she said at last, “but… a spoon has been damaged.”
A spoon. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or inquire if the district was in such dire financial straits that the loss of one utensil warranted restitution through child labor.
As the story emerged (through a tribunal of giggling witnesses), the crime took place in the cafeteria—a crude theater of strength, pride, and government funded nutrition. A rival classmate, swaggering with the confidence of a boy certain the world owes him applause, challenged my son to a trial of strength. An arm wrestle was proposed. But seeing the futility of his odds in that arena, my son—clever, inventive, and tragically literal—proposed an alternative: spoon bending.
The first contender managed a modest curve, enough to elicit applause from the gathered mob. But when the lunch attendant approached, drawn by the crowd’s roar, my son, sensing the moment demanded grandeur, exerted himself beyond reason and cleaved the utensil in twain.
Thus ended the duel, and began his descent into consequence.
For the price of that poor, sundered spoon, my son has been condemned to cafeteria duty. And, cruelest of fates, the first day of his servitude coincides with his birthday—and Pajama Day.
Tomorrow, as the other children cavort in fleece and freedom, he will don a hairnet and apron over his festive pajamas and dole out reheated poultry gravy to the masses, spoonless but polished by experience.