Time Off For Bad Behavior

AJ and Riley didn't make it to Spring Break. Don't worry. They'll be fine. They just got a little extra time off before their regularly scheduled vacation. Of course we might never know exactly what happened at home when the news came about the fight they had in the hallway after school, but we can assume.
AJ's mother tends to answer the phone this way: "What'd he do this time?" Sometimes his teacher is calling to tell her what a good day AJ had, but when she sees that number on the caller ID, she simply assumes. Admittedly it's a pretty safe bet on his mother's part, but AJ didn't stand a chance on this one.
Riley, on the other hand, responded in a way that many of us might relate: He ran away. Rather than go up to the principal's office as he was directed, he took off. He got it into his head that being sent to the principal's office was the next step to being shipped off to Juvenile Hall. Maybe his mom had let him know that he was on this slippery slope, and he figured that bypassing the principal's office would short-circuit the process. It was my brother the sheriff's officer who taught me this lesson: "You can't outrun Motorola," meaning that if you blow past the first patrol car, the radio will just call up the next one to watch for you half a mile down the road. Such is the case with the telephone in our business. Add to that Riley's siblings who were more than happy to take the suspension notice home. For Riley, there was no escape.
And what was so important to these ten-year-old boys that they would poison their week by starting with a fist-fight two days before they would be free of each other for nine days? It was a girl, I'm told. Ginny was the face that launched a thousand ships, or in this case, a few dozen fists. No word yet on how her Spring Break will progress.