Entertaining

 "If I have a choice between two things, I pick the most entertaining."

You might imagine that these words came from some luminary: a rock star, a movie star, a pop culture star. Someone who had it in their head to live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. It's the kind of statement that might feed into the legend of a James Dean or John Belushi. You might expect to read that phrase on a book jacket quoting Hunter S. Thompson. 

None of those celebrities offered up this epigraph. 

It was a fifth grade boy sitting in the principal's office. He had been caught with a number of his associates sneaking around behind the dumpsters after lunch, attempting to skip computer class. This feat was accomplished, after a fashion, since he did not end up attending computer class. Instead, he ended up with the aforementioned associates cooling his heels in the aforementioned principal's office. 

Troy is rounding out his sixth year of enrollment in our school. He came in as a kindergartner, and if he can hold it together for two more months, he will be promoted on out of here with the rest of his fifth grade class. 

It should be noted here that Troy is by no means the toughest nut to walk through the doors of Horace Mann Elementary. That's a distinction that remains open to some discussion and lengthy reflection. He does share something with a number of his predecessors: A distinct lack of consequence. 

I suppose this would be a good place to let you know that by taking his merry band on their ridiculous mission to avoid my class, I was able to teach the rest of the fifth graders without much interruption. Without all the desperate attempts at trying to disrupt, one would assume for "entertainment," there were a few moments of active learning allowed to take place. 

Which is kind of a shame, since Troy has a solid native intelligence that allows him on those rare occasions that being in a classroom appeals to him to participate in meaningful ways. The challenge being that those opportunities have become fewer and further between as he approaches the nominal finish line of elementary school. He is heading out into the cold, cruel world that awaits him in middle school. 

On the long and ever-expanding list of kids I have taught over the years, I know of just two who did not manage to make it to their eighteenth birthday. Both of them died from gun violence. And though that number is only two, they haunt me. Was there anything that might have spared them and their families that tragedy. I try not to consider the number of former students whose paths I lost track of who might have encountered a similar fate without the aid of the grapevine that brings those stories back to me. 

Instead I focus on the kid who just recently applied to Stanford. He spent his time in the principal's office back in the day. Somewhere along the line, he made a different choice. A relief for all concerned. I am clever enough to know that Troy is not ready to hear the rest of this story, but I hope his ends well. 

I really do.