Hookie

So, my work day ended with me comforting an hysterical woman who was standing in our school office waiting for the police to arrive. She is the mother of one of my students. I marked him "absent" today, without really thinking about it, because he sometimes gets sick and doesn't come to school. No big deal. Except that this morning, on her way to work, his mom had dropped him and his bicycle off at a nearby friend's house so that the two boys could travel to school together at the correct time. I guess, after we got it all figured out, he did, indeed ride over to school with the friend, but then, he surreptitiously left the playground and rode away to another friend's house. There, three of our students played hookie:

A day in which liberty is taken upon oneself to exclude themself from school or work obligations while, most likely, pretending to be sick 



But, the plan went awry when his mom came home to find he wasn't there, and then he wouldn't answer his cell phone (yes, 10 year olds with cell phones...) and so she came by the school to see if he was at tutoring.

Nope.

We fourth grade teachers came up to the office in answer to the secretary's call, and mom was screaming and crying and shaking. She, of course, was sick that someone had kidnapped him. We, of course, didn't have any proof that this didn't happen. Except that when we all stood there in the office, we school people began to do a little addition...you know 2 + 2 = ???

As we came inside initially this morning to start school, I'd had an older student tell me a cryptic message about another student in my class. "If (boy's name) is absent today, I know something about him and (5th grade boy)."  Well, Ididn't reply, because I was immediately distracted by other events.  Then, later, as I contemplated the attendance roll, I realized that two of my students were absent and one of them was the boy referenced by the mysterious tattler. I called the office to see if  they knew anything, but she said the 5th grade boy's grandfather (with whom he lives) had called to say he was home sick.  I was still a little suspicious, so I called my student's house and left a message about his absence and that we were taking an important test, call me back, please, blah, blah. 

Well, after the grandpa left to run errands, a miraculous recovery occurred, and the two boys from my room had met up with the "sick" 5th grader and had apparently spent the day biking around, and dropping in on different houses when they could see that their various family members had left for work. There is a lot of shift work in Las Vegas, so it isn't a 9-to-5 town. Now, after school, I finally connected with my one student's parent on her cell phone at work, and this was the first she'd heard that her son had apparently skipped school two straight days. "Thanks," she said, "good information to know."  Well, good for her...not so good for him, me thinks. 

A friend of the hysterical mom finally called her to say that she'd seen the boys biking past her house and she'd run out and snagged the missing son. We heard Mom start in on him on the phone as she left the school with the police officer who needed her to help him finish his report---now that it was no longer a missing person.

All seven of us (secretaries, teachers from both grades, principal and nurse's helper) sat down in the office and took a deep breath.  I said to the principal as we looked at one another in amazement, "Well, if they survive the beatings, I'm guessing that they won't be part of tomorrow's Field Day, huh?"  "That's right, " she replied. "That's right."