In Texas, boy was suspended for bringing the “one ring to rule them all” to school to make a classmate vanish:
Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.
Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.
“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”
The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.
“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.
Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend’s head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s “precious” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”
“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy’s father later wrote in an email. “If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back.”
It gets better.
This kid has been suspended for referring to another student as “Black”, and for the 2nd suspension, it was for bringing a science book to school:
Two of the disciplinary actions this year were in-school suspensions for referring to a classmate as black and bringing his favorite book to school: “The Big Book of Knowledge.”
“He loves that book. They were studying the solar system and he took it to school. He thought his teacher would be impressed,” Steward said.
But the teacher learned the popular children’s encyclopedia had a section on pregnancy, depicting a pregnant woman in an illustration, he explained.
They suspended a kid from school for bringing a science book.
Can we please give the whole state back to Mexico?