A New Hope

I walk through the office and find little first grader, Shakur, bawling his eyes out and shouting, “I DON’T WANT TO GET A U!!!!!!” The Assistant Principal asks me to take him for a walk and get him to calm down.

I take him outside and tell him, “When I’m feeling down, I get good feelings from the Sun.” I tell him to close his eyes and put his arms out and put his face up to the Sun. He does. He stops crying. I ask him to tell me what’s wrong. He immediately starts bawling again, “I DON’T WANT TO GET A U!!!!!!”

“Why not?” I ask. He tells me through the tears, “If I get a U, my mom will take away my video game.”

I am stunned for a second, then I rip off this rant, “What? A video game? A video game? Wait a minute, what system are you runnin’? A PS2? Me too. What’s your game? Star Wars Battlefront? Man, I OWN that game! What character do you play? Darth Maul? Man, I roll with Boba Fett. I love to fly up to the rooftops. You better hope I never get to play against you, I’ll tear you up!”

At this point, I have his attention off of his current dilemma. I ask him if he ever plays as Anakin. He says, “Sometimes.” I ask him if he knows who Anakin turns into. He knew that Anakin turned into Darth Vader. I ask him why he turned. He says, “He was tricked into being a bad guy.”

We talked about how angry Anakin was when he realized what he had done. I told Shakur that when I saw him in the office, he looked like HE was turning into Darth Vader. Shakur laughed. I asked if he remembered when Luke lost his hand. I told him, “It seemed like it was the end of Luke, but he came back stronger than ever. I asked him, “If you get a U in conduct for the day, are you going to give up, or come back strong and get an E in conduce tomorrow?” He shouted, “I’ll get an E!” I took him back to the office to face his Assistant Principal.

The Force is strong with this one.