There's a Reason That Cutlery is Limited

You know today was the full moon, right?

Any teacher would be able to tell you that simple fact, even without a calendar, Google, or the Farmer's Almanac. We just know. It's as clear as the bad haircuts that frame our dark-under-eye-circled faces. Kids kick up their flip-flop-shod heels on full moon day. Oh, Missouri denizens...you need to be showed?

Exhibit A: Genius arrived home after robot practice, sniffing about the kitchen for edibles. He scored a leftover chicken sandwich from yesterday's lunch, a chicken strip, and a vat of honey mustard. The salad was met with a turned-up nose. I casually asked if one of his friends was playing baseball this year. They were starting practice today, a coincidence that has nothing to do with the full moon. Genius, a robot boy, not a baseballer, said that he did not know. I asked about another. "I'm not sure, but he stabbed me with a fork at lunch today."

Oh, he lobbed that one in there like a slow-pitch softball for me to hit out of the kitchen. I SO wanted to say, "Stuck a fork in you? You're DONE!" A clever baseball taunt, you know. But I refrained. Not because I am above such clever repartee. But because that little story hit home concerning MY lunch period.

Exhibit B: A certain table was noted to be acting hinky near the end of the lunch period. It's not like they're on our watch list. It's our sixth sense. Or, you might say, our first-period-lunch sense. We have the younger kids. Freshmen and sophomores. Who sometimes are observed acting positively sophomoric. Like today. One leaned toward the dude sitting next to him, brandishing two white plastic spoons near the neck area. If I didn't know better, I might have suspected he was practicing applying defibrillator paddles to restart a heart. However, because I am smarter than Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted, when she declared that she was going to use an ink pen to rip out her aorta, and jabbed it at her neck...I know that, like the aorta, the heart is in the chest. Good to know.

The duty teacher went to investigate. A not-so-innocent by-sitter inquired, "You mean he can't finish popping that pimple?" Uh huh. At lunch. Check your appetite at the door.

Thank goodness we don't give them white plastic knives. The gash Genius was sporting from the fork was deep enough. Since he wasn't raising a ruckus, I imagine that his forking did not materialize out of thin air. Perhaps he attempted to snag a tasty morsel off the tray of another. He does it regularly around here. But we are not armed with white plastic forks. Nor do we live by the state penitentiary code.

Maybe I need to check Genius's room for a poster of Rita Hayworth. The Shawshank Redemption was on TV Saturday night while he was away at a friend's house for movie night. Not that I want to thwart his escape. I might leave a metal spoon in plain sight.