Fire Alarms and Snitches

Today the fire alarm went off and I can't help it, but it made me think of Baltimore. To those of you who think I am living in the past, I'm sorry. It's just that lots of things remind me of Baltimore and I never recorded half the stuff that happened so that's just what I am doing now. Don't be mad at me for therapeutically resurrecting my murdered soul. Ann, Kat, Sara, you know what I'm talking about. (Am I speaking in Hyperbole? Were souls actually killed? Girls, feel free to comment.)

Anyways, the end of my first year in Baltimore, kids were setting fires in garbage cans almost everyday. One bold child actually lit the locker room on fire. (I won't mention the even bolder students that set fire in a classroom during class because that happened to a teacher my second year. I will just stick to the first for today.) All the fires were pretty bad for morale and things got even worse when we were ordered on lockdown. Things hit rock bottom though when some lovely students started a fire with the express purpose of jumping a student during the commotion of the evacuation. The student they jumped was my student and we had been desperately trying to avoid this kind of thing. He had told me a few weeks earlier that he wanted out of the Bloods and the only way out was to be beaten out by ten people for seven minutes. I convinced him to let me tell some other adults because I didn't know what to do about this. I brought in Coach B. and he brought in Coach M. and they got the "let's get you out of the gang safely" ball rolling. But our plans didn't work out too well because they lit a fire and they got him. Luckily, they weren't at it for too long before somebody found them and stopped it and luckily it was only four or five beating him instead of the prescribed ten. It hurt when I saw A. He was pretty bruised. It hurt even more when his mom asked me "where were you?" as in "where were you when the Bloods went after my son." Well I wanted to say, and I know this is mean, "where were you?" as in "where were you when your son joined the gang." Its not that cut and dry I know and his mom is a good woman, feelings were just running high. When A. told me about the fight later he told me about all the punches he threw and what they did to him. He said "My dad always told me never to hit a girl, but I hit K. like she was a dude." Nobody thinks the less of you A. Three or four guys and a big mean girl against one, you hit whoever you want however you want.

And now for snitches. One of the songs we are singing for our Christmas program is "I'm Getting Nothing for Christmas." Many a line in the song contains the whine of the naughty child saying that "somebody snitched on" him. Mrs. M. asked the kids if they know what it means to snitch. Well I know and and you better be careful cause snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches.