Show Down in the Elementary Cafeteria

I ate lunch with Landry today. There was (inexplicably) a kindergartener in in-school-suspension today. The teacher that supervises in-school-suspension is a big, scary, red-neck man. We call him Rat. He has never had children and doesn't seem to understand them at all. He does good barking out orders and dealing with juvenile delinquent high school boys but diaper duty is a new one for him.

In our cafteria there are the regular seats and there are some even smaller seats for the head-start kids who are under five. Landry and I and the rest of the 5th grade were finishing up our Frito Pies and this little bitty kid comes in with Rat. He was so little he came up to Rat's kneecaps. Rat tells him in his BIG SCARY VOICE to go sit at the little head start table. The kid started whining and saying "whhyyyyyy"...."why do I have toooooooo"....well you could have heard a pin drop when Mr. Rat hollered back at him "BECAUSE I SAID SO"....

They went back and forth for several minutes. The room was totally silent. The poor little kid started crying. He was sobbing away and he said in the most pathetic little tiny kid voice "But I don't wanna sit in the little chairs....I'm a big boooooyyyyyyyy."

The poor kid doesn't know that for the rest of his life he will be marked. While walking through the halls on the way out to my car all the 5th graders were talking about it and saying in their best little kid voices "but I'm a BIG Boooooyyyyyy." That kid will graduate from high school and never live down the ridicule of crying and saying he was a big boy simultaneously in front of the whole 5th grade.

What was even funnier is that I think Rat was more afraid of the little tyke than anyone is of him! I could see his face getting red and him thinking...how am I going to get out of here with a shred of my dignity??

By the way, the kid won....he ended up sitting out in the hallway, NOT in the little chairs.