Hamming It
So, I am a middle school teacher and have been doing this for ten years now. Students are not always at their best but this one takes the cake for the strangest discipline issue I’ve been a part of. Now, this was a few years ago, so I’ll refrain from direct quotes until the end. I used to work for a smaller school with a very small mix of students. There were 20 or so students per classroom, 60 per grade. We had a classroom pet, a hamster named Amelia.
Students have chores to care for the hamster before school and they respect that she is left alone during content parts of class, mostly. All the students love Amelia, and she frequently uses her hamster ball for exercise during study hall.
One day, we are all coming in from recess, and the alarm is raised. Amelia is gone and the cage is open. Now, Amelia is a little bit of a Houdini. If that cage is secured exactly right, she finds her way out. Never goes far, as most of the kids are very, very careful. So, it is not a commonplace event but no malicious intent is suspected.
As a class, we spend some time looking for her, and I pop over to my neighboring teacher’s room to give her a heads up. Our “wall” between our classrooms is a divider with hamster-sized gaps, so sometimes she’s over there. On my way back, I notice something strange in the hallway. A few pieces of the bedding in the cage are on the floor in the hall.
They are right in front of some of my student’s lockers, which are inches away. Now, as the hamster lives in my room and had never left breadcrumbs or shown signs of telekinetic abilities, my suspicions have been triggered. I call up admin, share that I am suspicious of the contents of said lockers, and asked if they would come do a locker check.
Admin agrees with my suspicion and decides a locker check in that area is warranted. Lo and behold, an opened locker reveals more bedding inside. Now, kids are weird. They collect weird things. If you had never seen the inside of a typical bank of middle school lockers you might be astounded by the variety of strange things that come out.
However, with Amelia at large, this is a bit concerning. A quick lookup leads us to Bob, the current user of the locker. Now, Bob went home during recess. He suddenly felt sick and had “thrown up” in the bathroom. Now, we don’t like to throw around accusations, but a tiny life is missing so we call up Bob’s mother. Bob’s understanding mother.
We explain what we’ve found, she’s upset and drags her son back into the school. Bob denies any knowledge of Amelia’s AWOL status. So, we ask about the bedding material. Bob claims he thought the bedding would be cool, so he took some of it weeks ago and we are only now noticing. This is despite the fact that the hallways are swept nightly.
But Bob is in this for the long haul. He starts to well up in tears and asks how we could accuse him of endangering Amelia in any way. Big crocodile tears are streaming down his face for a solid 20 minutes. It’s late, he’s not budging, and we are not a school that has cameras. We decide to give him the benefit of the doubt.
All of us classroom teachers—all eight of us since we are a small school—stay late and look for Amelia. We set up peanut butter traps—100% success previously—check in cabinets, and do the whole nine yards. Bob’s mom says she’ll keep an eye out, and we all go home. Over the next two days, students express concern and worry and Bob is right there with them.
He is so worried about her getting food. He expresses horror when a student suggests she got outside and may have become food. He helps search for her before school. Now, Bob has a little sister. She’s five, so not super reliable, but old enough. Three days later, Bob’s mother comes in when she brings him to school and asks to speak to me.
She is furious. Her daughter got scared of a little tan ‘monster’ running around her room and told her mother. I hand her some peanut butter and a shoebox and tell her how to set a trap. Meanwhile, Bob is getting unpacked, sulking and loudly complaining that his mother thinks he took the hamster and he’d never do that.
No one is surprised when his mom comes in about two hours later, Amelia safely captured, and thankfully unharmed. Well, Bob gets called to the office again. I’m on my prep and am asked to join. Now Bob does not know yet that his mother has come into the school. She asked us not to tell him and to give him one more chance.
Now, admitting mistakes is hard for anyone, much less a 14-year-old boy. Bob is evidently an excellent actor as he is crying again about how he’s being hounded. These are big ol’ crocodile tears. But that’s not the best part. He brings up the Salem Witch Trials, he accuses us of discrimination, and the indignation is endless. Our admin patiently waits for him to stop talking
Bob is still sniffling. Once he stops talking, the admin tells him that his mother has just found and dropped off Amelia. Bob tries one more time. Tearfully, he explains that his friend gave him a hamster and it just so happens to look like Amelia but truly and honestly that is not her. Now, our admin is a “wait them out” kind of guy.
He sits in silence and just looks at Bob. It’s a staring contest for two minutes. I remain silent because I just don’t know what to say at this point. It’s so quiet you can hear the clock ticking as each second goes by. All of a sudden Bob stops sulking, sits up straight and says in his normal voice, “Ah. I thought I could get away with it.” If Bob becomes an A-list actor someday, I would not be surprised.
~ Agirlhas1kidney