Finally, with my stress level about to hit the ceiling (of course, there’s never just one kid having trouble at a time, so there are about forty other things I’m also trying to manage), I stopped and just put my elbows on my desk and my face in my hands. I sat there and just breathed for a minute, trying to a) collect myself and stay calm, b) model good anger management strategies, and c) make it clear how incredibly annoying he was being.

This response was very confusing to him, and he quickly went quiet as he tried to evaluate the situation. I enjoyed a luxurious minute of silence as he puzzled through the appropriate course of action. Luckily, he could tell I seriously needed peace, and didn’t start up with the questions and the whining.

Instead, from some ridiculous part of his brain, he decided that a soothing lullaby was probably the best choice. Suddenly I was being softly serenaded with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” so that I could relax. This continued until I picked my head up and we both went back to work.

And so began a long series of phone calls to everyone in the police department. We don’t keep weapons – call Evidence. No one turned anything in to us – call Records. We can’t release information on a minor – stop calling. Finally, I reached a detective who took pity on me and invited me down to the station. I’m sure we can turn up something.

When I got there, I waited on our side of the bulletproof glass with a bunch of very unhappy-looking people until the detective showed up with an enormous report. This was a relief for the fifteen seconds it took for me to flip through and realize there was no picture included. When I asked about it, he was as confused as I was. Well, there should be a picture. I wonder what happened to it. Why don’t you come on into the back and we’ll try to figure it out. I followed through a series of metal detectors into the back offices of the police station. Not the jail part, but the part with coffee machines and neighborhood gang maps and Officer of the Month. We met a dizzying number of officers before finding one who happened to still be carrying the knife in his briefcase.

Now I want you to imagine me, sitting at a big table in a heavily secured part of the police station. One officer puts a knife down on the table and leaves to get a camera. The other officer remembers something else and leaves in the other direction. Suddenly it is just me, sitting at the table alone with a big ol’ knife in front of me.

Now imagine the look on the face of the next officer to pass through that room. Me, unsupervised with a weapon, hanging out in the conference room. It may have been the double-take of the century.

That’s probably the moment I realized that I have a really, really strange job.

Full volume with only occasional pauses for air, this is what I heard:

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE SUSPENDING HIM AGAIN! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! YOU’VE GOTTA KEEP HIM! YOU’VE GOTTA LET HIM COME TO SCHOOL BECAUSE I DON’T WANT HIM IN MY HOUSE! I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME ANYMORE! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT ANY OF THIS! THAT BOY CANNOT BE GETTING SUSPENDED! I THINK YOU’RE GREAT! ISN’T IT LATE FOR YOU TO BE AT WORK? YOU SHOULD GO ON HOME NOW AND HAVE A GOOD NIGHT!”

Did you have to re-read those last few sentences? Because if there were such thing as an audio-double-take, that would be what I did.

Very often, people confuse anger at their children with anger at me, but it is very rare that someone manages to disentangle the two mid-yell. This woman has a skill.

Obviously, I then also wanted whatever was in his pocket playing music. I held out my hand again, but this time he refused.

“Ms. Mathinaz, I can’t give it to you. It’s too large for my pocket. It took me forever to squeeze it in there and it isn’t going to come out.” He punctuated this with some dramatic tugging and some complaining that his hand was going to get stuck.

Thinking of all the things kids use to listen to music, I wasn’t buying any story about his hand being stuck in an overfilled pocket. I kept my hand out and tried to be patient while I explained strategies for removing items from pockets. It’s hard for a kid to be defiant while I’m sweetly explaining that it’s best to grab the very top of the item and make sure you’re pulling it toward the opening of the pocket, not toward the top of the pant leg. He gave in and handed it over.

Jackpot! He handed me this. An old school, analog radio with dials and an antenna. It really was just a little too large for his pocket. Who knew anyone used the headphone jacks on those things? Has anyone, in the history of music technology, ever used one of those with little white iPhone headphones?

I kept a straight face, but I also succumbed to the only natural response in this situation. I expanded the antenna and turned the dial until I found Michael Jackson. Remember when you used to have to fiddle with the antenna and the location to get clear sound? I did that for awhile until I found a good spot on the windowsill.

He was fascinated. He hadn’t known the use for the antenna until now.

Our school is a great school, but I deal with only the worst things every day. Our kids are great kids, but I deal with the same handful in the office all the time. You’ll have to forgive me if my view of everything has become a little warped. It’s easy to feel like I’m in Battle Mode against everyone and forget entirely about how nice the big picture actually can be.

Today, I had a kid in my office, preparing him to go back to class. He’d been suspended for an epic string of misbehavior involving theft and broken things and stunning disrespect. He’s the kid who wears his hat in just the right colors and obsessively checks that it’s tilted at just the right angle. He’s also the kid who actively disrupts ninety percent of his classes and angrily informs his teachers that he doesn’t give a fuck about their consequences.

I asked him how his weekend was. He told me it was great, because he cooked with his mom and she let him rent a bunch of movies.

Doesn’t the jaded part of you just know he was watching viciously violent R-rated scary movies?

I asked. He saw Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Ice Age 3, and Madagascar (his favorite).

As if that isn’t cute enough, I then asked him to remove his hoodie before going to class. He had to pull it over his head, and of course it got stuck. He had to tug and tug and tug with both hands. It caught on his eyebrow, pulling his left eye wide open before popping off his head. He talked about Madagascar through the whole thing as if nothing adorable was going on.

Kids. They are just kids. Just kids. Just kids.

Today, the tantrum was coming from a girl who decided that defiance was her best course of action once she’d been sent out of class. She initially wouldn’t come to the office, and then wouldn’t sit in my office, and finally sat down in an empty office and started a loud monologue about how much she hates the school, her teachers, the rules, and whatever else she could think of.

Both the teacher and I had given her chances to cool down and chances to air her concerns, all of which she’d refused. She was starting to blatantly misbehave just to piss me off, and I hate to give misbehaving kids what they want.

I grabbed a bag of popcorn from my office and joined her in the empty room. In my work clothes, I sat down on the floor, leaned up against the wall, and started watching her freak out while I munched on popcorn. She ranted at nothing while I calmly enjoyed buttery salty goodness. Admittedly, it was probably one of my less professional moments.

Luckily, the “you’re making yourself more miserable than you’re making me” tactic is usually very effective. She finally quit ignoring me, finally looked directly at me, finally brought the volume down, and said, “Ms. Mathinaz, I don’t think it’s cool that you’re eating that in front of me.”

I smiled sweetly and replied, “I didn’t say you were supposed to sit in this room.”

She processed that for a second, and then decided she was losing the Non Compliance game. She got up, went into the office I’d originally sent her to, sat down, and started her assignment. I followed her with my popcorn and kept munching while I explained consequences.

The good news is that she finally did what I wanted without me having to raise my stress level. The downside is that I ate the entire bag of popcorn, which is probably no better for my blood pressure.

Now cue the sappy music, and enter the big, tough, angry boys I spend all my time with.

The first one found me after homeroom and, to my astonishment, handed over a box of chocolates. I looked at him quizzically.

“They’re for you, Miss.”

I raised an eyebrow. “For me? Did you poison them?”

“Nope, not this time!”

“Did you spit in them?”

He looked at me like I was the village idiot. “What? Seriously? How am I gonna spit in chocolates?”

Legitimate point. I ate them.

The next one was in his usual spot in my office when he started announcing that he had something for me. I figured he was trying to distract me and told him to just do his work. He persisted, and I kept shutting him down. Finally, he went into his backpack anyway and pulled out one of those long-stemmed plastic roses. He handed it over with the most adorably bashful look and I melted.

It’s like stepping into some alternate universe, where I don’t spend all my time giving them consequences and they don’t spend all their time throwing tantrums at me.

This also happens to be a highly controversial rule. Last week, one seventh grade boy said something very disrespectful to a classmate, who turned and punched him. A fight ensued, and I suspended both of them. The family of the kid who punched first is up in arms. They believe that their son was disrespected and had no choice but to fight, making it self-defense. Dad has gang tattoos on his neck and was visibly scornful when I tried to explain that punching is never an appropriate response on a school campus. Mom yelled at me that her son isn’t going to be anyone’s little bitch. I eventually quit trying to explain myself and just announced that this is policy and it isn’t negotiable. Sorry I’m not sorry.

Now I have a kid who has heard his parents argue with me, support the punching, and staunchly disagree with the school rule. He’s usually really sweet, but now he’s holding his parents’ stand and refusing to let me sway him. As part of the suspension, he had to write about his plan to improve. After hours of refusing to write something, he finally wrote, “I’ll only respond verbally like a little baby and then I’ll go run away and cry to my mommy.”

Time for the big guns. I called in a favor with one of my office regulars, who is popular, athletic, tough, and never one to shy from a leadership role. I said, “I’ve got a younger student who is confusing being a man with punching people. Think you could help him out?”

My office regular transformed into the maturest version of himself, and the angry kid actually listened. While I shamelessly eavesdropped from the next room, I caught this gem:

“I get it. You don’t want to be a punk. I’ve been there, trust me. But if you don’t do anything, then it isn’t your fault and you won’t get in trouble. Who’s the punk when he’s in the office? Who’s the punk when he’s suspended? Who’s the punk when he’s in juvie? You see, man? It works out better for you when you do things right.”

I’d probably have trouble focusing in school too.

Sometimes, it’s a teacher giving the “what do you want your life to be?” lecture, which ends up involving a “wouldn’t this be terrible?” piece about life in prison. In other conversations, it’s parents trying to get their kids to wake up, describing how hard it would be for the kid to live there and how hard it would be for Mom to see her kid that way. This inevitably involves a vivid description of the nearby juvenile detention facility and frequent use of its affectionate local nickname.

That the juvenile detention facility is an easy walk from our school and even has an affectionate local nickname should be concerning enough.

What’s even more concerning is the messaging kids must get when they hear this all the time. I know these people mean well, but I’m actually really uncomfortable with threatening kids in such a way. When I was growing up, not a single person ever even suggested the possibility that I might end up in jail. It was never on my radar, and hence was pretty solidly out of the question. I get nervous that having these conversations puts a depressing idea into kids’ minds.

At my old school, people used “working at McDonald’s” as the threat, and I’m not sure how it’s escalated so severely since then. It has to be hard to be a kid when we talk college when they’re doing well and jail as soon as they mess up. I thought we decided Scared Straight was ineffective?