Disturbing the Peace

Every afternoon, I sit in the car line outside of the middle school and wait for my daughters to be dismissed. Lots of people do the same, and the line of cars goes all the way from the school parking lot down the ridiculously long driveway to the road. I like to play games on my phone or read a book while I wait because I have to get there a good thirty minutes before dismissal if I want to pick them up in time for after school activities. I usually settle in for the wait, engine off, windows down, hoping for a breeze in the late summer heat. I also hope for some peace during my downtime before the craziness of dance and guitar and piano and homework begins, but unfortunately, most of the time my wait is hardly peaceful.

You see, while I quietly and patiently wait for my kids, other parents with younger children in their cars also have to wait, but much less patiently. And we all know how little brothers and sisters can be; in a word, annoying. Some parents park their cars and release these younger kids to the sidewalk where they congregate and devise some sort of game to occupy themselves until the middle schoolers come streaming out of the building.  Usually it involves a lot of screaming and running around, with no parental supervision, since their moms and dads are busy with their cell phones. Yesterday, though, I thought I was watching a scene from “The Lord of the Flies.”

On one side of the school driveway are the parking lots and the sports fields, but along the other side is a small patch of forest, with pine trees lining the edge of the grass near the sidewalk. This little bit of grass is where the scene unfolded. It began with one kid, a grade school age boy with a faux-hawk, who flew from his car the moment it stopped. He picked up a stick from the ground and whipped it along the trees, making a violent grunting sound with every lash. He ran back and forth along the trees, making sure to whip each one. As he was flogging the trees, a tomboyish girl ran from her car and joined him. She too grabbed a stick and proceeded to beat the innocent trees. Her cries mixed with his grunts to create a disturbing melody, which was a siren’s call to yet more children who emerged from the safety of their minivans to join in. Three, four, five more kids, all beating the trees with their own limbs.

The girl impulsively threw down her stick and ran into the woods, the first kid brave enough to kick it up a notch. She came out with a rather large rock, bigger than a brick, heavy enough to require two hands to hold it. She lifted the rock above her head and with a mighty roar, threw it hard onto the ground. That act was all it took; the rest of the kids ran into the woods as she did and returned with their own giant stones. As one rock hit the ground, the other kids would try to pelt that rock with their own. Seriously, these were big two-handed rocks, and their noodly arms shook as they lifted them high overhead before throwing them down with enough force to chip away little pieces. I might have even seen a spark or two.

The faux-hawk boy, not to be outdone, ran back into the woods and came back with a thick branch this time. It was no twig; this branch was thick enough to mount a human head. The rest of the kids were up to the challenge and deserted their rocks in search of the ultimate branch. In a flash, they all returned and began beating the rocks and the trees with their fat sticks. I locked my doors.

As the frenzy of violence against nature escalated, one of the kids crossed the line. He took his rod and hit another boy’s branch. It was a declaration of war. Full out quarterstaff sparring and parrying commenced, a violent minuet on the school grounds. I looked around to see if any of these kids’ parents were going to put down their phones long enough to intervene, but alas, that wasn’t to be. 

Finally, the school bell rang and a mom called out to her son to get back in the car, right when the boy with the faux-hawk lifted his tree branch high overhead, ready to split the skull of another wild but weaker child.  One by one, the kids hurled their sticks back into the woods. Some even grabbed their abandoned rocks and heaved these too into the copse of trees before returning to their minivans and SUVs. I felt fairly certain that if they had more sophisticated weaponry, mace and clubs and burning torches, they could have successfully stormed the school and ransacked the building. They would not have taken any prisoners.

When I was a kid, I too liked to play with the plants and rocks in the yard outside my childhood home. But I used flowers and leaves to make a fake stew, or, after a good rain, a mud pie or something. I didn’t use our plants as weapons to engage in hand to hand combat with the neighbors. I mean, I’ve heard of a pick-up game of football, but not one of Mortal Kombat II.

As shocked as I was to see that level of violence, I was just as shocked to see all the kids were pretty cool with it. I could just imagine one of my kids joining in, trying to reason with the mob, telling them that playing with sticks could be dangerous, that someone could lose an eye, that they might damage the trees, or just standing there saying they should all calmly and quietly return to their cars and start their homework.

As the middle schoolers were dismissed and the car line began to move, I saw the faux-hawk kid hanging out of the  side door of his minivan as his mom drove, no seat, no seatbelt, high fiving all the older boys as they walked by. No wonder she didn’t have a problem with his violent display. Maybe she was scared of him too, and secretly hoped he would roll under the tires.