Confessions of a Mother
The Story of Black Thursday
The mud was always our greatest temptation. To run and dive and slide across thick wet earth was considered the apex of the Ultimate experience. In our countless matches of hardcore frisbee we had faced torrential rain, biting frost, and blistering heat, but always the game went on, no matter what. So it went the morning of January 12.
In our hearty anticipation of the day's game, we had disregarded the rumors of it's prohibition. Supposedly, the administration had announced that the field was too muddy to go outside that day, but very few of us had actually heard the announcement. By 11:40, ten of us were on the field. Within minutes the game was in full force.
Faction Z got off to an early lead with Scott, Obadiah and I making several solid plays. The passes were generally short and direct due to the difficulty of gaining traction in the mud. As was customary, most of the players went barefoot, but thinking ahead, I had brought cleats and thus had a substantial advantage in speed and maneuverability. Despite the difficult conditions, everyone seemed to be playing in top form. It was destined to be an extraordinary game. Destiny, however, was no match for the administration.
Around 11:55, with the score at 5-2, Mr. Tidwell marched onto the field and began sending people inside. When he got to us at the far side of the field, he summoned us around him for a conference. After expounding on the virtues of cleanliness and personal responsibility, he sent us to the bleachers to await our punishment while he went back inside to talk with Dr. Spense. We sat on the bleachers and discussed the situation. Eventually we decided that the only logical course of action was to instigate a riot.
After yelling towards the school for some length, we finally got the attention of one of the sophomores in Ms. Cox's class. The girl looked out the window and waved at us. We yelled at her to inform the student body that the Mothers had been imprisoned. We were sure that this would cause a riot in no time, and the administration would be forced to release us. Unfortunately, the girl just smiled at us and closed the window.
After several more attempts to make contact with students inside the school, we resigned to singing. We made it through "The Roof is on Fire" and "We Don't Need No Education" before Mr. Tidwell returned from the office. He led us from the bleachers to the back entrance of the school where he gave us another speech and confiscated Rahul's frisbee. He then sent us down to the boiler room to get our shoes washed off. Once our shoes were clean and we returned from the boiler room, he informed us of our sentence. We were expecting something lenient since this was our first offense and there had been several other people out on the soccer field with us. The punishment, however, was in-school suspension for the following day. We were outraged, but of course, there was nothing we could do about it.
The next day, we all filed into the conference room and took our seats. Mr. Wilson handed out copies of the ISS rules and informed us that we weren't allowed to talk. In response to this, we all took out our graphing calculators and began writing messages to each other on them. Mr. Wilson, being thoroughly unimpressed with our ingenuity, announced that all communication was prohibited. After a couple of hours, however, Mr. Wilson left the room and chaos ensued. Noel took a handful of POGs out of his backpack and began throwing them at people. This caused an immediate retaliation of paper wads and various articles of clothing. After the war subsided, we began talking about how this day would become infamous in MLK history. Noel suggested that we call it Mother's Day II, but we eventually decided on Black Thursday. Noel even designed a commemorative POG for it.
When Mr. Wilson came back, he informed us that he had work for us to do. We all went outside and set up the flags and goals for the soccer game that afternoon. Ironically, the field was still quite muddy and we probably tracked in more mud from that than playing frisbee.
Once we had finished, we went back to the Conference Room and spent the last few hours devising how we would get Rahul's frisbee back. Once ISS was over we left the Conference Room and joined our fellow students on the front porch. While they complained about how boring the day had been, we had to confess that ISS had actually been quite fun. I guess Black Thursday wasn't so black after all.
--Kaldari
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