High school exams are coming up, so M asked if he could get together with two of his friends at his best friend’s house to study history together. Now, every time M hangs out at the best friend’s house, the boys talk non-stop and spend nearly all their time playing computer games and surfing the internet. The other friend is one of those kids who just gives off a bad vibe. I don’t know of a single thing this kid has actually done wrong, and yet neither E nor I would be surprised to open up the town newspaper some day and discover he’s been arrested for dealing drugs. Oh, and as for studying together, it’s also worth pointing out that none of these kids has the same history teacher, and they’ve all covered different amounts of stuff in class.
But I can’t totally control who M’s friends are, and certainly he could be hanging out with a worse crowd. So I figured I could let M go for a few hours, and even if he didn’t study, he’s still got plenty of other time to study at home. About 5 minutes before I was supposed to give him a ride to his friend’s house, I suggested M go round up his stuff. He put on his coat, picked up a fiction book, and started fiddling with his shoelaces. Two minutes later, I told him again to round up his stuff. He put down the book and finished with his shoes.
I finally laughed and told him that if he wanted to pretend he was going there to study, he at least ought to round us his history notes or his textbook. Busted! He laughed and rounded up his notes.
The kid’s dad later reported he did hear them mention the French Revolution at some point. However, they spent much of their time on the computer visiting the alternate history sites they enjoy so much. So for all I know, they were studying some version of the French Revolution in which King Louis XVI thrived and Marie Antoinette lived out her old age running a bakery.
