Little did Nicholas Taylor know, when he picked up an artfully bitten piece of pizza, that he’d be bringing a world of hurt down on his 10-year-old shoulders. One of his lunch buddies noticed that the partially-eaten slice looked like a gun. When Nicholas then picked it up – no doubt saying something really inflammatory like, “bang, bang” – that set the David Youree Elementary School brass into full-on zero gun tolerance Defcon 1…
From wkrn.com:
James Evans, spokesperson for the Rutherford County School District, said the boy isn’t being punished because he had a piece of pizza shaped like a gun.
He’s being punished because “some students reported he was making some threatening hand gestures, that he was shooting other kids at the table and they reported it to a teacher,” according to Evans.
He continued, “The student didn’t tell him the truth about it so he got silent lunch for six days.”
Evans called the punishment minor but said the message is clear.
“I realize some might say we are going overboard but the principal is just trying to use an abundance of caution and send the message that we don’t play about guns and it’s not something we joke around about,” he said.
Nicholas has been sentenced by school principal Steve Luker to “silent lunch” for the rest of the semester (six days). I’m sure he’ll survive. He should probably count himself lucky he didn’t eat his pizza in the shape of a hand grenade or something even more dangerous. Or maybe he should just start eating his slices from the tip.