The Explorer pulled onto one of the tree-lined streets of south St. Louis and came to a stop in front of LaClede Elementary School. The old school built of the same red brick, at around the same time as all of these houses the kids walk past and live in now.  Those same people who built those houses, they knew the value of education then even more than most do now. They bulit their schools to be palaces of education, and Laclede Elementary was no different. Laclede was three stories, with a large staircase leading to the front door. Above the front door, a tower rose up 50 feet, with four copper spires weathered bright green by 100 years of St. Louis climate. The school was named after Pierre Laclede, the French man who is widely known as the Founder of St. Louis who came up the river from New Orleans and started this city on the river side back some 200-something years ago. The kids all had to learn about who he was in school, in the school named for the founder, an exercise of civic pride they didn’t take as seriously as their need to memorize stuff they really needed to know like baseball stats and who was “going out” with who at that moment.

    Jamie turned to her partner. “OK, I’m going to run in there real quick and see what’s going on.  Hopefully it won’t take too long.”

    “Hey, take your time. We’re still on the clock. I’ll be out here waiting.” He opened the morning paper to the sports section and started to read up on the Cardinals latest exploits as Jamie bounded up the stairs and into the school.

    She turned the corner into the office, and immediately saw her son sitting on a small plastic chair right by the door. She bounded in and reached for her son. “Oh, Jake, I’m here. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner. What happened? Are you ok?”

    Jake looked at his mom through eyes that were already starting to tear up again. Principal Dixon had led him back out here into the main office while they were waiting for her to show up. “I’m ok,” he said as he started to sniffle again. “But I did something.” He was afraid to say what, still afraid of the response his mom might give. Here she was, taking time out of what she had always told him was a busy time for her during her work day, to come down here because of another of these stupid super day dreams. “I’m sorry, mommy,” he said as he hung his head and began to sob.

    Jake’s mom held him in her arms, and struggled to give him the comfort he sought, the comfort that can only come from a mother’s embrace.

    “It’s ok, Jacob. It’s ok. Don’t worry about it. What happened?”

    Just then, Principal Dixon came from the hallway and approached the two as they were still in their embrace.

    “Uh, hello Mrs Thompson. I’m Principal Dixon, thanks for getting here so quickly.”

    Jamie straightened up and looked witheringly at the principal. She was very unhappy with this man, first of all for interrupting a necessary moment between mother and son, and for interrupting her day for such a vague reason as an incident, one she still had no idea of.

    “It’s Miss Thompson, first of all,” she scolded him. “And you’re lucky I’m here at all. It’s not easy to take a part of my day and come down here to check in on this.” She was clearly taking all of her frustrations, on her son, if there were any, on her stupid bosses, and on the principal himself, and focusing them squarely onto this man in front of her. “Now please tell me what this ‘incident’ is you’re speaking of.”

    “Well, uh, Miss Thompson, if you will step into my office, we can discuss this further.” Principal Dixon was a tall, broad shouldered man with a dark complexion, but his physical stature stood no match to Jamie Thompson, a mother on a mission.

    “OK, then. Jake, let’s go and talk this over.”

    “Well, um, Miss Thompson, maybe it be best that Jake wait out here and we discuss this in private.”

    Jamie paused and stared down the principal. “Oh, no. Jake and I, you see, we are a team. We do everything together, that’s the way it always has been. Hasn’t it, Jake?” He nodded while biting his lower lip, not wanting to do anything to upset his mother further. He had only seen his mom speak like this when she was very upset, and he wondered how much of it was directed at him, maybe all of it, he thought.

    “We will go into your office together, or not at all.” She stood with her arms crossed, then went to grab the hand of her son after delivering the ultimatum. Jake could feel the firm, but tender grasp and knew that she was not completely upset with him. The hand would be holding his much harder if it were.

    “Uh, well, uh, very well then, Miss Thompson.” Principal Dixon said as he motioned down the hallway. Jamie led Jake through the hallway as the principal followed behind. The secretary looked up quickly from the computer screen to see this woman who had just called the principal on the carpet walk by.

    The mother and son walked into the principals office and took seats in the chairs in front of the mahogany desk, Jake in the same chair he had just been in when he had explained himself, his mother just to his right. Principal Dixon followed them in and closed the door behind them. He walked over to his chair behind the desk and sat down with his chin coming to rest on the points of his fingers again.

    Jamie had an impatient look on her face as he took his time gathering up what he was going to say. “Please, Mr. Dixon, my photographer is waiting in the car for me. I’m technically still at work right now, and my day is very busy. Can you now please explain to me what happened.”

    “Yes, Miss Thompson. Well, you’re here because your son did something very bad this morning.”

    “What is it? What could he have done? My son has never gotten in any trouble here.”

    “Well, his teacher, Mrs. Coleman, says she saw your son, Jake… well, she saw him hit another child across the neck with a large stick.”

    Jamie snapped her head back and popped her eyes open once the principal finished his sentence. She couldn’t believe what she had heard, so she asked him to repeat, just to make sure the words would be the same this time.

    “Jake hit another child with a stick this morning on the playground, just before school started.”

    Jamie looked at her son, who was once again hanging his head and looking at his feet floating just a couple inches off the floor. “Jake, look at me,” she said slowly. The tone was one Jake had heard before, the one a child instantly recognizes as the “trouble voice”. He raised his head and looked at his mother. Through the tears that were starting to form again, he could see the look of shock and disappointment on her face. “Is what Principal Dixon saying true? Did you really hit someone with a stick?”

    Jake started to cry again, the tears running down the same paths on his freckled cheeks. “Yes, mom.” he blurted out between breaths. “But I had to, Nathan was going to hurt someone.”

    “What do you mean, Jake? Nathan was going to hurt who? You?”

    Principal Dixon spoke up, “Uh, Miss Thompson, um what Jake is trying to say…”

    Jamie interrupted him with a raised finger and said “This is between me and Jake right now, please.” She turned back to Jake. “Now, please, honey, tell me what happened.”

    “I don’t know what happened,” Jake said through his sobs. “I don’t know where I was, I don’t know what I was doing, I don’t remember almost any of it. All I know is I swung a sword at someone and then a bunch of lights flashed in my head and then I was at school and here in the principal’s office and in a lot of trouble. I’m so sorry.” He began to wail. His mother knelt in front of his and gave him another comforting embrace. She looked at the principal with confusion and asked him, “What is going on here, why would my son have a sword with him?”

    “Well, ma’am, he didn’t have a sword. As I told you earlier, Jake hit a boy with a stick he had found on the playground. He told me earlier that he was thinking that he was a spy, and he found what he thought was a sword. It seems like a pretty far-fetched story to me. I thought maybe you would know more about it, so that’s why I called you here.”

    She turned back toward Jake and put her forehead against his. She spoke softly to him, knowing now her son was in distress and needed her comfort now more than ever.

    “It’s ok, son. I’m not mad at you. Is what Principal Dixon saying true? Did you imagine you were something else, something like a spy, and hit Nathan with a stick, thinking it was a sword.” Jamie herself couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth, how odd this all seemed. Then she remembered what Jake had shared with her in his bedroom the night before. Him winning the world series as a Cardinal. Him playing in a rock band at the Arena. He said he was having weird dreams. Could this be another one of them, but one where he actually did something bad?

    “Jake, honey, was this one of those daydreams you were telling me about last night.” Jake nodded as their eyes met. He felt a little more comfort knowing that now, maybe, his mom was beginning to understand. Principal Dixon looked on at this scene and sat silent, not wanting to interrupt again and draw more ire from this comforting, yet still hostile mother.

    “It was a super daydream, I guess.” Jake said, his breath coming back to normal now he knew his mother was no longer mad. “I was in a sunny place, by the ocean. I was looking for a bad spy, and I found him, and he was going to hurt a woman, and he said he had already hurt Billy, and then he was coming after me. I had to do something. I had to fight him.”

    “Who, Jake, fight who?”

    “Uh, Miss Thompson, we’d prefer that the identity of the child involved stay private…” Mr. Dixon said as he leaned forward in his chair.

    Jamie said, without taking her eyes off her son, “I’m going to find out who, Principal Dixon. I’ve told you once, stay out of this right now.” Mr. Dixon leaned back in his chair and Jake’s mom looked back into her son’s eyes and urged him to continue.

    “It was Nathan, Nathan Billings. Only, it was supposed to be him in my daydream too. But he was grown up in it, and so was I, and the girl. But after I hit him, we all changed back to children, and my head hurt a lot.”

    “Ok, honey, thank you for telling me this stuff. You did good, ok?” She left the embrace and sat back in the chair, but kept her hand on her son’s knee and kept eye contact with him as she did. Contact, reassuring contact, was most important here.

    “Miss Thompson, what Jake did is a serious offense. We simply have zero tolerance for students behaving violently like Jake did. I must recommend that he be suspended from school for five days.”

    Jamie snapped her head forward and looked the principal up and down with a scowl Jake had never seen before, not even when he was in the deepest trouble, not even the time he broke the lamp on the bookshelf in the living room with the baseball.

    “Did you not hear a single word my son said? You’ve heard it twice now, once before I got here, which having you interrogate him without me here is bad enough. He said he was trying to defend himself and one of his classmates from someone. And don’t think for a second that I don’t know who this Nathan Billings is. Word gets around in the parent’s circles, Principal Dixon, believe me.  I know that this Billings kid is a little punk who harasses all the kids on the playground every day. And yes, his behavior is violent too. I’ve seen the bruises on my son’s arm from the noogies and stuff that he does. In fact, Jake told me last night that this Billings kid almost took his head off with a fastball when they were playing ball on the diamond behind the school. And yet, your zero-tolerance policy doesn’t seem to apply to that does it?”

    “Well, um, Miss Thompson,” Principal Dixon began to stammer. He seemed to be shrinking before their very eyes. “We simply can’t be… there, um, especially after school, to, um, enforce everything…”

    Jamie interrupted him. “No, you choose not to enforce it. You know, I know a lot about this community. When you looked up my phone number there, did you not see who I work for? I know who the Billings family is. I know Nathan’s dad works for the Mayor. You probably see Nathan doing this thuggery all the time and do nothing about it because you don’t want to tick off his daddy. Well, you know what, if you’re going to punish anyone, punish me. You know why? Because last night, before my son went to bed, I told him to fight.“ Jake looked up at his mother and smiled. He remembered the conversation from the night before, and she was right, she did tell him to fight. He never though he would have the chance to do it, especially so soon.

    “I told him to fight back when these freaking kids push him around. I am sick of trying to have you ‘educators’ fill in for us parents and then do a horrible job at it. You know, on the way over here, my partner and I were talking about what a horrible job you city schools people were doing. And you know what, maybe he was right. Maybe it’s time we moved to West County or I put him in at St. Gabriel’s. Because it’s very clear to me that you folks here at the city schools have no idea how to really handle bullies, and how to handle kids who are having problems. Did nothing my son say stick with you? He said he is having visions, he told me that last night, he had several visions where he didn’t realize what he was doing when he did them. Now, I don’t know what’s going on with that, he didn’t start this until yesterday, but I intend to find out. But now you drag me in here while I’m trying to work and tell me my son is a monster for simply standing up for himself and his classmates in the face of a thug bully. I will not let you label my son that way. He is my son, he is a great kid, and to be honest,” she said as she looked at her son with a smile and a wink, “I am proud of what he did this morning.”

    Jake looked at his mom with a sense of pride he had never felt before. She had just come in here and dressed down his principal, the imposing broad shouldered man with large hands, talked to Mr. Dixon like he was a child, talked to the principal worse than she had ever talked to anyone.

    Principal Dixon sat silently for a moment, stunned by the riot act Jamie had just read to him. He really didn’t know what to think, except that she was right. The principal’s backpedaling continued.

    “Well, in light of this, um, this condition Jake is in, I can’t see how suspending him would help any. But, he must be punished some how. We will determine that at a later time, possibly some um, some after school detentions perhaps. But, I do recommend that Jake be checked out by a doctor for this um, condition before he return to school. I’ll make sure his teacher knows about it. Also, I think it’s best Jake spend the rest of today at home. It is a Friday, so maybe a couple days on the weekend will cool things off a bit.”

    With this Jamie nodded, and turned to her son. “Well, Jake, you heard the man, let’s get your stuff and go. I guess you get to come work with me and Alex today. How does that sound?”

    “Good, I guess,” Jake said hesitantly. But he was glad to get out of this situation, to get away from the school, from this office with the plain walls and spend some time with his mom, even if it was while she was working. Jake jumped down from the chair and grabbed his mom’s hand as she lead him out of the office and out the doors of Laclede Elementary. They stopped to grab Jake’s bike, pushed it over to the bike rack and locked it up. Then Jake flung his backpack over his shoulder and walked with his mom to the waiting explorer with Alex the photographer behind the wheel. The two climbed in, mom in the front, and Jake behind her in the back seat. They buckled up as Alex drove the car down the tree lined streets past the playgrounds where the chatter of Jake’s deeds continued through the morning recess.