Dinner and a Movie

One of the beautiful things about a residential is that the kids not only deal with each other all day in school, but they also go home to each other at the end of the day so when there's beef between two of them, it usually erupts quickly and violently.

Most of the staff members become desensitized to this kind of thing pretty quickly. It wasn't at all unusual to see one of us looking like a cartoon character, arms outstretched with a kid clutched in either hand while they continue to throw fruitless punches at the air. Usually it was a fight over a girl, sometimes a fight over who stole someone else's pencil or some other inane and asenine issue, but to them it was the fight of a lifetime.

But because it was so common, some of us were at times slow to react to a fight. Sometimes we also knew exactly what was going on and we knew that there were moments when certain kids needed a few minutes to experience the concept of natural consequences. If you call your room mate gay, chances are he's going to punch you in the face at some point. Cause and effect kiddies.

One afternoon there were about three different classes out on the playground. For some reason the older boys loved to play Four Square, a game I never thought could be classified as violent but I now know it depends on how you play it. Other kids decided to play basketball, and the rest chose to simply mill around and watch everyone else work off the two helpings of pancakes from breakfast. I typically monitored the Four Square game because it was the only one I didn't totally suck at, and on this particular day that's exactly what I was doing which meant I was concentrating on the possibility of my first ever Four Square win against John and Bobby. What I was NOT concentrating on was the two 250 pound boys beating the snot out of each other under the basketball hoop. I looked up just in time to see the science teacher dive in between the two of them, shoving one to the ground while the other backed right into the waiting arms of a TA. The one who landed ass first on the pavement slowly got back on his feet and tried to rush the other kid but it was useless. Two more TA's had jumped into the fray and the fight was officially over.

I stood, openmouthed, not sure whether or not it was ok to laugh when one of my middle schoolers came up behind me, grabbed my arm and yelled, "Did you see that? That was dinner AND a movie!"