The Day the Lights Went Out in CowTown: A Narrative Poem of Epic Proportions

Gather round, and listen! 

I have a tale for you 

 About the day the school went dark 

 And the chaos that ensued. 

 That Wednesday started well enough 

Then a loud “Boom!” shook the dawn 

Some lights across town flickered 

But our school’s power was flat-out gone.

When the doors were opened

Kidlets filled the darkened halls

And we worried for their safety

In pitch black stairways and bathroom stalls.

First corralled inside the lunchroom,

Then shuttled down the street.

The kidlets poured out of the buses

And filled the KFAC’s cushioned seats.

A constitution video

Was played to fill the time

While the city crews worked feverishly

To repair the power line.

But the kidlets were not interested

And though cell phone use was banned,

The sneaky little critters still

Texted complex escape plans.

And when the power problem

Proved too large to be controlled

The kidlets were all notified

That they would be paroled. 

But to turn 500 kidlets loose

In the middle of the week

Is a stupid thing to do,

Unless with their parents you can speak.

And so contact lists were handed out

And staffers hit the phones

To find out who would be picked up,

Take busses, or walk home.

It took over an hour

To get parental  consent

And luckily, only a couple dorks

Disappeared before they should have went.

Later on that afternoon,

Much to the kid’s dismay,

The  building's power was restored.

School would resume for the next day.

But when the next day dawned,

Another BOOM rang  out

And plunged the building into

A school-wide brown-out.

One third  of classes still had light,

As did the hall where kids were fed

But less than half the  outlets worked

While the rest were really dead.

So teachers tired to educate

Kids in pioneer-ish ways.

But minutes later another boom

Heralded another power-less day.

But thanks to lessons learned

The very day before

Things ran much more smoothly

To get the kidelts out the door

And so just after 10 am

The last bus pulled away

And the junior high school kidlets

Celebrated another school-less day.

Their siblings were oh, so jealous.

Their parents were annoyed

Their teacher’s had cell-phone fatigue

But the kidlets were over-joyed.

And so this group of students

Down in history will go

Known as the kidlets so full of luck

They got two snow days with no snow!

You can be sure, come Sunday night

Many children will lie awake

Whole heartedly offering prayers

For more power lines to break.