In which I observe impressive self-government

  
    
Today I saw a stabbing, a criminal trial, and a perpetrator brought to justice.

Never fear, I was safe the whole time.

Here's what went down:

I'm in class - second grade - minding my own, when the teacher gets a cell phone call.  She takes the call, mid-sentence, and walks out of the room without a backward glance. Nice.

So there I am, Daniel in the lion's den.  Me and thirty 8 year olds.  I walk around the class, biding time until the teacher gets back. They don't really have any work to do, so they are bored, and the classroom starts buzzing.

All of a sudden, behind me to the left, a screech. I whip around, zeroing in on the source - one outraged boy holding his arm like it's in a sling, another glaring at him with calculating eyes.  A crime!

Pandemonium breaks out. SOMEONE just got STABBED in the ARM WITH A FREAKIN' PENCIL!!! they are all gasping.

One girl is well-dressed, pretty, and not a demure bone in her body. Her head flies up. "WHAT did he do???"  Clearly, we had just attracted the attention of the Alpha Female.

She flew to the injured party's side, using her powers benevolently. She examined the wound, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together tightly as if she were witnessing unspeakable atrocities. When she was done examining the (to other eyes) negligible scratch, she patted the victim comfortingly on the cheek.  Then, she whipped around to face her kingdom.

In a loud, clear voice she detailed the alleged crime to her subjects.  They swooped in, full of righteous indignation and questions.  Did he stab you? Yes.  To the allegedly guilty party: Did you stab him? Well, yes.

The class pronounced the defendant guilty as charged.  He had a strong enough sense of self-preservation to look rather abashed.

Finally, Alpha Girl administered the punishment. She grabbed his whole chubby face in one delicate little hand, tilting his jaw and squishing it, and began to loudly denounce his sense of moral right and wrong.

Obviously, this is where I intervened.

Some of you are undoubtedly wondering why I didn't before.  But a.) they were kind of handling it, in their own way, and b.) are you kidding? that was interesting. It was sort of like Lord of the Flies meets the Little Rascals.

No way was I passing that up.