5-Year-Old Tells His Teacher His Backpack Will Explode If He Takes It Off, Reminding Us We Need A Gauntanamo For Minors
HuffPo- A 5-year-old boy’s parents are speaking out after they say their son was suspended from school for telling a teacher that he had a bomb in his backpack.
Jackson Riley allegedly made the claim at Great Valley Charter School in Modesto, California late last month after he refused to take his backpack off when asked, explaining that by doing so may cause the “bomb” to explode, his father, Ian Riley, told HuffPost.
After the teacher checked his backpack ? presumably for explosives ? the child’s father was called to come get him from school. Jackson was suspended for one day, and his permanent record was marked with the claim that he made “terrorist threats to school officials,” his father said.
“We just want to get our child’s situation rectified,” Ian Riley told HuffPost on Wednesday. “He’s a happy, healthy 5-year-old with a healthy imagination.”
When I was 5, my “healthy” imagination legitimately believed that if I asked Hailey Schaeffer to marry me, we would be married (she ended up marrying Ian Eldredge, that little skank). My imagination had me conjuring worlds out of legos and believing that Mr. Rogers could hear me through the television. I also imagined that anybody with a black belt in karate could single-handedly defeat an army of invaders, because a black belt in karate was the ultimate achievement in the world. And finally, I believed that our dog Waggie could speak English because of movies like Homeward Bound and Babe.
These are the manifestations of a healthy, 5-year-old’s imagination. Levying bomb threats against teachers at your school? Unhealthy. I realize that when you’re 5, your backpack is your livelihood. It contains all your worldly belongings, and you protect it with your life. But when your teacher asks you to take the backpack off, you can’t tell her that its removal may cause the bomb to explode. Because that’s how it starts: today, you’re pretending to have a bomb in your backpack. Tomorrow, you’re recruiting suicide bombers to join the Al-Qaeda splinter cell you formed in your tree house. The Backpack Bombers: death to infidels, no crusts on our PB&Js!
I absolutely love that this kid now has “made terrorist threats to school officials” on his record. Good luck getting a summer job with that glowing accolade on your record, you lunatic! Conversely, when he gets to high school, he’ll be guzzling vaginal fluid through a straw. High school chicks love the bad-ass, brooding rebellious types. Cutting class helps; being known as the class terrorist… soaks.