Part 4: May 22 - The Colony - Day Two

Prefer to listen? Check out the audio version below:

As Nancy followed the children out of the food court and back to the dorm that housed the pets, she kept the boys in her sight. She had no doubt that they were planning something. Ryan and Jayden still retained some innocence, but their body language indicated that they were anxious, and their furtive glances her way were like a silent Morse code tapping out a warning. She had no doubt they were up to something. The two younger boys followed Randy everywhere, hanging on to his every word. The older boy—he was the sly one. He could look you straight in the eye with a broken beaker in each hand and, without a trace of remorse, tell you he knew nothing about any broken beaker, even when he had smashed the items directly in front of you.

The school team had been at their wits’ end and had called for a teacher-parent conference to work out some strategy to counter the boy’s unacceptable behaviors. She and the team had walked away from that meeting stunned by the parents’ refusal to listen to the school staff’s report or concerns. It was one of those rare meetings all teachers experience during their careers, when they come face-to-face with parents whose parenting skills were so radical to the norm that the education team walked away thinking, Now we know why the child is the way he or she is.

Parenting skill had improved since the early 2000s. The turning point had started when a waitress stepped up to confront a screaming child in a restaurant because the parents did absolutely nothing about their obnoxious child. The internet had lit up with people applauding the waitress for shutting the screaming kid up. The public had had it with going out to enjoy themselves, only to end up feeling that their time and money had been wasted due to someone’s child turning an expensive, quiet time of relaxation into an annoying, gut-churning experience. There were some who felt the waitress had been too heavy-handed and had no right to interfere, but the message was out—the majority of people had had enough of putting up with other people’s children who would not behave, and parents who had no clue how to parent. There would always be some who just could not accept that their little darlings could do anything wrong.

How many times had the parents of these three boys come to school in response to a report of their behavior, only to refuse to accept that their child would do any such thing? The teachers and administration had explained repeatedly that the boys had to be held accountable for their actions and had detailed how their newest adventure into mischief created a danger not only to themselves but to other children as well.

She wondered if Carl would have any ideas. Maybe he could put them to work at the barn—maybe there was something they could shovel. She smiled to herself at the image of that idea. Ahh, poetic justice for the hours of worry and frustration they had perpetrated on the entire school staff. How many times had the boys stood in front of her trying to talk their way out of their most recent antics, and she had mimed shoveling something as they spun their latest yarn? Yes, turning those three over to Carl would be the best thing that could happen to those boys. However, it might not be the best thing to happen to her new friend.