The+Dictator+of+my+Elementary+School

The Dictator of my Elementary School “What?” I screamed in my high fifth grade voice. That stupid woman had done enough! But this time she had gone too far. I had had enough! I slammed my foot down onto the cracked blacktop. “I am going to do something. She is going to pay. She is going to regret she ever did this to us.”

Fifth grade. That was the year I remember most of all out of all my elementary years. Fifth grade was the year Thomas Jefferson Elementary got a new principal. And in my point of view, that principal was a tyrant. An evil, cruel tyrant who ruled her empire with an iron fist and didn’t even listen to the thoughts of her citizens!

Yes, fifth grade was most…unforgettable.

I waited impatiently in the office clutching the papers that would win my argument. My leg bounced as I waited to be called into her chamber with two other boys: Shant Araradian and Alan Chung. Finally, the secretary at the desk said in a nasally voice, which put a picture of Fran Dresher in my head, “The principal is ready to see you boys.”

I stood up and heard the sound of the two others follow behind me. There was something about walking into the principal’s office that kicks your confidence in the leg, even though you knew you weren’t in trouble. It was just somehow intimidating. But I held my head high, pursed my lips and entered the evil layer trying to look somewhat intimidating for a fifth grader.

And there she was: the dictator. The woman Julius Caesar. She smiled at us with her shark-like grin from behind her wooden barricade and asked us to sit. We followed her order and sat down, Alan on my right, me in the middle, and Shant closest to the door.

She then asked, “Now why do you boys want to see me?”

Inside me something flared. She knew why we were here! Why does she insist on playing dumb? Not more than a week ago I had written a letter of complaints and arguments and sent it to her…and I never heard back.

This emperor, this female Napoleon, had banned running not only in the sand area, but also on the back top and the grass fields where //you were supposed to run//. Her reason for this? Running was “dangerous.” Even though the only real injuries that happened at our school were those on the monkey bars. I mean, an ambulance had to come and get the stupid kid who thought it was a good idea to hopscotch along the top of the bright red bars, and of course he fell on his face! And the only kid who actually got what you could call injured or hurt while on the black top was //walking// and tripped over one of the potholes the school //refused// to fix. I had put all this in my letter as well as the affects of lack of running could have on the children’s and teacher’s jobs and educations. That woman knew perfectly well why we were here!

But nonetheless, I told her why we were in her presence. She gave us a “huh," and I laid my paperwork down on the table. It was a petition with over 150 signatures of our classmates including those of our student school board. It also included //another// letter of mine stating our reasons for wanting back the joy of running. And if a fifth-grader was willing to do all of this, you better believe he is passionate about what he wants to see happen. She folded her hands like an innocent school girl, and let me tell you, she was nowhere near innocent, and started to explain her reasons for doing this, which let me add was the largest pile of horse dung ever. She hadn’t even glanced at the petition, which made me angrier. How dare she? How dare she just openly reject a work that my classmates and I had slaved over? A pleasant thought of hitting her with an eighteen-wheeler entered my brain making me giggle on the inside.

As she made certain “points” I tried to speak up, only to be cut off by her as she relentlessly babbled on. I could almost see the poison from her fangs spray from her mouth as she formed her untrue words, which added to her obviously false speech of tyranny. As she went on and on, I realized something. I was going to lose. I had all the arguments and all the reasons and I had the passion to win, and yet, before I even stepped into that office, I was going to lose. My fate was sealed. And I hated her for it. I hated that my screams for justice could be silenced with a simple wave of a hand or the annoyed turn of the head. She had all the power. And me? I had nothing except a bunch of useless signatures, according to her they were, and a letter she would never take seriously. What could I do? Right now, she had the power of King George III and I was just a mouthy, disgruntled colonist. The very few times I was able to get a word in, I was backed up with a: “Yeah, that’s not fair,” kind of statement from Alan. Shant on the other hand looked like he was scared out of his mind and was about to puke and I wondered why he was even here.

I then discovered you couldn’t take down an evil emperor’s rein in one day. Well, unless you stabbed her to death like they did to Julius Caesar, but unfortunately, that was illegal and I was stuck with the peaceful method. I knew I would win eventually, just not now. She was going to feel my wrath, and not to be cliché, but this was literally only the first battle with many more to come. So at this point I checked back into reality and her words transformed from the tuba sound from //Peanuts// back into real words, and I caught the end of her vomit-inducing speech.

At the end of her series of pathetic arguments and dull talk, she gave us the option of hopscotch and the game of Foursquare that got old around the 1970s. Then she dismissed us from her office. No, wait. She didn’t dismiss us; she politely kicked us out. “You boys can go now.”

With a scowl, which I made sure she caught, I left the office with Shant who was first out the door and Alan. As I exited the school office, I knew that petition was going to be shredded in between the teeth of the shredding machine right next to her desk, which was probably the same fate my letter first received. She wouldn’t even read it and that wanted to make me scream, “We are students and we go to school here! I want an enjoyable elementary career and I don’t want some ‘peaceful playground’ junk that will never work ruining it! You got that?” Which is exactly what I screamed when I got home.

But this wasn’t over, and both the principal and I knew it. I was going to show everyone that kids have a voice too, and we also have power. At that time, I didn’t know it, but this experience was slowly shaping who I was to be as a person: one who speaks his mind and his opinions. And I was going to show everybody what a little fifth-grader could do. This loud-mouthed kid wasn’t done speaking, because he had a lot more to say. And he would be back soon. He would be back very soon…

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**—Harrison Pyros**