The Pencil ✏️

A girl in Rudairo's class stole her pencil the day before yesterday. Rudairo saw her using it and confronted her, but staying true to her brand, that girl - I'll call her Rose - stubbornly refused to hand back the pencil. She said, "Everyone knows I bite my pencils , so here..." and she proceeded to bite our pencil so it would look like the rest of her stash, probably also pinched from unfortunate fellow pupils. The teacher wasn't there when all of this was happening. Rudairo let Rose be, and yesterday showed up with a receipt from a month ago when she bought the pencil.

I had no idea she still had it. She reported the thieving classmate to the teacher and presented her receipt as evidence that the pencil belonged to her. The classmate could only present the bite mark as evidence. In the end, we got our pencil back, which Rudairo proceeded to dip in sanitizer as it had been in Rose's mouth. I'm really proud of her for being so resourceful. We would have lost all of the R8.99 we used to buy the pencil, and money doesn't grow on trees, you know. When she told me she had been reunited with our pencil, I told her Rose should thank her lucky stars because I'd already ironed my bum shorts, ready to go and kick up some dust🥊🥊. Rudairo said I should remember to take off my earrings too if an opportunity presents itself again for me to start a fight. I believe it sure will, because that child wasn't punished, after all it was just an R8.99 pencil. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how hard-core criminals are created. They start small, with pencils, then next time it will be a jersey, money, and eventually a car and even a life as they get more brazen after getting away with "little offences". Before you know it, you're visiting them in jail and looking for lawyers. I'm not saying she should have been nailed on the cross, but she definitely needed to be reprimanded or get a demerit at the very least, to nip the bad behaviour in the bud.