The Blade – I Have to Wonder, Though

I was just sitting there working away in my office at work when the telephone rang. It was my daughter’s 5th grade teacher. What he said on the other end of the phone paralyzed me for just a moment, so thank God for passing moments.

 

The teacher informed me that my daughter had been cut with a blade during Computer class. Although the teacher was not present when this occurred — as this was the student’s ancillary time, and teacher’s conference time, there was some sort of “horse-playing” going on when this incident transpired.  Hmm! I wonder where the computer teacher was.

 

Well, I was ready to fly out of my office, but the teacher told me that my daughter had been seen by the school nurse, and she was fine. The cut was cleaned and bandaged, and there were no serious injuries, or veins severed, so I was relieved. The news that my daughter was fine, settled me down some, but I still had lots of questions.  One of them was how could something like this happen at school? The teacher informed me that the young boy apparently brought the blade from home. He’d gotten it from his pencil sharpener.

 

Who knows what actually happened during computer time that day, but according to my daughter, she asked her friend to help her with something on the computer she was assigned to use, and when he reached over to help her, he did more than she asked him to do with the program, so she decided to pay him the same favor on his computer. Well, when she reached her hand over to his computer, he raised his hand to stop her and laid his hand on top of hers with the blade in his hand. It was a pretty good slash that drew blood.

 

Needless to say, this little boy had two days of in-school suspension in the Principal’s office, but I have to wonder——

I wonder:

if two days of in-school suspension n the Principal’s office was enough time to let the little boy realize the severity of his actions/intensions.
If the child ever thought about how using the blade in a different way could have really hurt or perhaps killed someone that day
if the Principal was more lenient on this child because his mother is employed on this particular campus.
if the mother was not an employee on this campus would the punishment differ
if the mother ever asked the child to offer an apology to my daughter.
why the parent didn’t attempt to contact me for an apology. I would have done so to any parent.
if the child learned a lesson from this incident that will prevent him from making future mishaps.
what my own child learned from this incident.

The child who brought the blade to school certainly didn’t make a wise, responsible choice that day. This was a great time to teach both children how what they do could negatively impact their lives and ruin their future. We have to teach our children to use their heads and make wiser decisions.

 

The enclosed photo of my daughter’s blade cut is a week later, so you can see how serious this could have been.

 

Photo: Compliments of Cherrye S. Vasquez