A 7-year-old girl by the name of Lucy rides to school with her Mom. On the ride there, she is both nervous and excited at the same time, for this is her first ever day at school. She listens to her Mom explain that school is a place where she will meet friends, learn and ultimately experience. She twiddles her thumbs in anticipation, only to grab onto her seat as her Mom steps on the breaks outside the front door. She gets out and takes one last look at her Mom, determined not to cry and to be strong. She walks along the cement path and enters the scary building, looking around she sees more kids her age enter a classroom upfront. She follows suit, only to see thirty odd faces staring at her as she enters – she’s late. She sees a desk vacant in the front and decides to sit down in it. There they all sit in silence, waiting on the teacher. She never arrives.
Each kid in the class has no concept of what is to happen and so they each go about their own devices, picking up books, looking at things, opening drawers and making friends. Lucy introduces herself to a few friendly faces and opts to take charge of the situation, she knows what’s meant to happen, but it isn’t and with no teacher in sight she decides to act. She grabs the closest book and stands in the front, “Quiet!” she shouts. The room suddenly becomes breathtakingly silent. Everyone returns to the empty seats, waiting in awe of what Lucy is to say next. Lucy grabs a book on the desk in the front and holds it up, “This is what we should read! My Mom said that is the point of school and here on this desk lies our book!” So all the kids grab the book that looks similar to the one Lucy has and each of them open it up. It has wonderful pictures of all kinds of animals and words they cannot yet read. Shortly after her announcement a boy obviously disturbed by the events decides to weigh in his opinion, “I don’t want to look at that book, I want to look at this one!” Not long after and a foreign girl sitting in the back shouts out, “You’re both wrong, this is the book we are meant to study!”
It is an hour before home time and still there is no teacher in sight. By now, the classroom is divided into six different groups, all claiming that the book they hold is the one that needs to be looked at. Lucy is adamant that hers is the right one, yet it cannot be if everyone else is choosing a different one. She gets angry and throws a tantrum, resulting in one or two kids from another group coming over to hers. The classroom is divided, yet everyone in it is so very sure of the position they hold, adamant in their convictions. Each group attempts to read their selected book, trying to decipher what the interesting words mean and what they sound like, all in an attempt to claim superiority over the other and of course, the title of being right.
At the end of the day, the teacher enters the classroom and stares at the scene in front of her; two kids lie unmoving on the floor, another three are busy beating up the foreign girl and there, standing on the teachers desk, is Lucy triumphantly holding up her special book. She quiets the room and regains order. Trying to make sense of it all, she asks who is responsible, to which Lucy responds, “I am Ma’am.” The teacher makes Lucy come to the front of the class and notices that she has the book from her desk firmly grasped in her tiny little hands. “Good girl”, says the teacher, “You chose the right book, without me even telling you which is the right one!”
The teacher asks everyone who was in Lucy’s group to come forward, rewarding them all with cookies and milk on their way out to the parking lot. She locks the rest of the children in the classroom and sets the whole classroom alight. “You chose wrongly”, is all that the scared children inside the classroom hear as the smoke and fire envelops them all.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
