A Few Thoughts on Natural Selection in the BJHS Bobcat Population

A few weeks before Christmas, some weather came through these parts.

The wet and cold kind of weather.

By some strange twist of fate, the wet, cold weather actually came and went before I had any kind of outside "duty". But it left behind a bunch of ice that stuck around until it was my turn to patrol the bus zone for a week in an attempt ensure no kidlets were squished.
I spent all that week trying to convince the kidlets that playing on the ice was a bad idea.

Well, that's not entirely true.

The truer statement is that I spent most of that week trying to convince the kidlets that playing on the ice was a bad idea. I spent the rest of that week helping teary-eyed kidlets limp back into the building so they could get ice packs to ice down their ice-induced injuries.

Every day, right after the 3:15 bell, I told the same herd of kidlets that they would get hurt if they kept playing on the ice. They paid me no heed... no heed at all... and continued playing until the 3:30 bell when, without fail, one of their comrades in arms would succumb to the laws of physics and prove my much-repeated (and just as much ignored) point. The sight of one of their own trying to hold back tears of pain was the only thing that could convince them to stay off the ice.

And that only lasted until the next day's 3:15 bell. Then the whole sad scene would be repeated.

Flash-forward to today, our first day back at school after Christmas break.

Once again, Weather had seen fit to cover large chunks of the school grounds with ice. Likewise, the kidlets had once again seen fit to use that ice in their misguided attempts to massacre themselves...I mean to have fun.

As soon as I left the building, I saw them running and slipping and scooting and sliding.

I immediately opened my mouth to holler some words of warning and of prohibition.

Then I remembered how poorly my sage advice had been received before the break.

Then I remembered the process of natural selection.

And then I accepted a snack-sized Snickers bar from a trustworthy kidlet, and sat back to watch nature do its best to thin the herd.

I have to admit that I felt very at peace with my decision to let the ice-related consequences flow as freely as the ice-related runoff flowed from the roof of the school.

In fact, I was feeling so in tune with Mother Nature's way of tweaking the gene pool, I didn't even remind the kidlets that the janitorial staff had waxed the floor outside of my classroom over the break.

Granted, I may regret my chosen course of action midway through the week after a few lunch periods spent mopping up splattered 7th graders from frozen basketball courts and freshly mopped floors.

And there is a very good chance that by Wednesday afternoon I will back sounding a voice of warning, heeded or not, because I really do care about the knuckle heads...

... and because I have a tendency to faint at the sight of blood.

But mostly because I care about the knuckleheads.