Game Of Crones

I did a favor for Arch Nemesis today.

She was uncharacteristically shy about asking. I had taken one of a multitude of homebound assignments to the office, and upon my return, I spied Arch lurking around my classroom door. I knew there was something in the wind, aside from after-lunch gas, because Arch makes no bones about her loathing of my pupil demographic. Poor Arch. She hemmed and hawed, nearly ground her toe through the linoleum square while working up her courage.

"Do you think you could write up Winged Mercury? I heard you yell at him in the hall today. I didn't see it, or I would write him up myself. This has got to stop. He thinks it's funny. He comes in laughing about it, like 'What are you going to do?' He has so many tardies in my class. And just yesterday, Mrs. Not-A-Cook, Mrs. Finger-Talker, and I all told him to stop running."

"I saw him fly by yesterday, but I was in the middle of a talk about a science fair project. I was in mid-sentence, and then he was past me, and you guys got him. Today I even said, 'STOP RUNNING! You were told yesterday to stop, and now you do the same thing again?'"

"Well, I told him, 'You'll be lucky if Mrs. Hillbilly Mom doesn't write you up. You've already been warned.' So since I didn't see him today, I can't really do it myself."

"Sure, I'll do it. But if my T-Hoe's tires are flattened, you have to buy me a can of Fix-A-Flat, and make sure I get home."

"Deal."

Uh huh. That's the way we roll at Newmentia. The Old Crone Network bands together for the good of the school. To keep people safe. Imagine a world where 200 students could sprint willy-nilly up and down an eighth-mile, ten-foot-wide hall for four minutes every class change! Oh, the inhumanity! Or imagine a world where they were told they HAD to run from end-to-end. Yeah. Not a workable system.

So Mrs. Hillbilly Mom took one for the team today. Word is still out on T-Hoe's opinion.