Kids are vicious.

Typing class is boring.  At least for me.  I think the kids have fun, though they grumble if they get stuck on a lesson.  I have to grasp at what little amusement comes my way if I want to have any entertainment out of it.

Today I was getting onto a kid for sitting and doing nothing, and as I scolded away, I noticed he had a fresh scratch mark from his right nostril to his eye socket, parallel to the nose.  I drove home my point (something like, "I don't care if you're racing with someone or not, you just have to be typing and not sitting there doing nothing.") and then asked, "What happened to your face?"

"Um...my face?" he asked.  I mean, I guess it's hard to remember what your face looks like, and if the scratch isn't actively hurting, it's easy to forget, right?

"Did you scratch yourself in your sleep?" I asked.

"Oh.  Kerry scratched me."

I raised my eyebrows.  "Kerry!  When?"  But I was already moving toward Kerry when he told me it was at recess today.  I bent over the back of Kerry's chair and braced my hand against her desk by her keyboard.  "Kerry," I said in a low voice, "Why did you scratch Lowel's face?"

Her eyes got a little wide, and her rather chubby face turned somewhat florid.  "We already talked about this in class," she said.

I suppressed a grin.  "That's alright.  It's important enough that we should talk about it, too.  Why did you scratch his face?"

"He uh...he punched me."

That alarmed me somewhat.  I turned back around to look at Lowel.  He was typing away.

"Well, I guess self defense is a good thing to learn," I told Kerry and was about to go open the subject again with Lowel, when another classmate interjected.

"Kerry, that's not what happened," Laura said.  "It didn't happen in that order."

I looked down at Kerry and bent again to rest my hand on her chair and put my head by her head.  "You mean, you scratched him first, and then he punched you?"

"Yeah," she said.

"So he was defending himself."

She pouted.  "We already talked about it in class!  Why do you have to talk to me about it!"

"I'm giving you a hard time because it's worth having a hard time about.  You can't go attacking people!  You should feel bad and embarrassed about it."

She didn't look like she felt bad about it. She just looked like she was mad about being reminded about it.

I pulled away and shook my head.  It seemed humorous at the time, but it's not really.  I don't know what induced Kerry to scratch Lowel, but I do know she is willful and bad tempered quite frequently in typing class.  I hope she learns to control her temper someday.  Perhaps I and her other teachers can somehow get through to her that scratching is no way to end an argument, and thus we may save some suitor a predestinate scratched face.

At the very least, if it wasn't amusing, it was more interesting than instructing, "Both hands on the keyboard!  Eyes up!  Don't look down!  Use the right fingers!"