I discovered my angel child, Nathan, has a wicked streak. A couple of months ago, he came home from school and confessed he had gotten into a bit of trouble. The Vice-Principal at Bayou View Elementary (Gulfport, Mississippi) is a super nice guy named Mr. Allen. Nathan thinks the world of him; he happily reports to me whenever Mr. Allen sits with his class at lunch or talks to him on the playground.
Still, Nathan couldn’t resist referring to Mr. Allen as “Mr. Alien” to classmates one day for a laugh. When his teacher got wind of it, she required him to write a note of apology that night for homework. I could tell he was mortified at the prospect of confessing this dastardly deed to his vice-principal. Plus, he hates writing anything–usually requires a lot of coaching to get an original paragraph out of him.
“I can’t do this!” he kept protesting. “Sure you can,” I insisted. I began to ask him questions: “What would you *tell* Mr. Allen if you had to explain yourself in person?” As he began to explain himself, I could see that the apology was more like a series of excuses (and aren’t we all a little guilty of that from time to time?); I let it ride. The letter he came up with is below. Somehow, I think Mr. Allen would be pretty forgiving…
May 24th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
How cute – but I can’t quite make out the 2 words after he was trying to be funny and he got ??.
May 24th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
He got “taddle taled.” Taddle should be “tattle” and he has turned a noun into a verb. It would read more clearly if he had written “some kids tattled on me.”