ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 11, 1996 TAG: 9611120142
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I thought I had a lot of trouble in elementary school because my sadistic cousin kept beating me up in front of the girls down by the see-saws at lunch recess.
But this kind of physical and emotional pain pales to insignificance, as we sometimes said in Radford, when compared to the case of the 5-year-old who got suspended from kindergarten for bringing his daddy's pager to school.
I don't think 5-year-olds ought to fool around with beepers.
I don't think adults should either, but this looks pretty high-handed to me.
They're afraid maybe the kid's going to go on a beeper rampage? TOT SLAYS CLASSMATES WITH BEEPER. Quick, Miss Jones, wrestle that student to the ground and get the SWAT team up here.
The school people will say, ``Well, gee, sure, that is, we need rules in these terrible times of juvenile drive-by shootings and other horrors.''
I think they're doing what many Americans do best -which is overreacting.
It goes on and on.
There was the 11-year-old girl who was fastidious enough to take a steak knife to school to cut her chicken at lunch - not to make holes in the vice principal.
The poor child merely wanted to keep the grease off her chin, and they suspended her.
A 13-year-old girl got kicked out of school for having a Swiss Army knife she intended using to clean resin off her violin strings. Another concealed-weapons rap.
There was the 13-year-old girl who was suspended for bringing Midol to school - an action that saved her classmates from quick trips to the wrong side of town for a fix. Not to mention a three-state crime wave by Midol-maddened children.
When our children were in school, I can remember feeling guilty about being a party to breakfast-table sessions in which we desperately tried to think up a show-and-tell act that was due in just a few hours.
You remember: "No, Clarence. You certainly may not take your dead goldfish for show-and-tell."
I assume parents now are spending the early morning hours shaking down their children for concealed beepers and checking their bedrooms to make sure they don't have Midol stashes.
You know: "All right, Myron, spread 'em."
And the day is near when some kid is going to take his old man's safety razor to school to show and tell how daddy gets ready for work in the morning.
I hope they let him have one phone call.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB