Confessions

During a quiet moment in class working on phonics, a first-grader at Lynwood Elementary school took a single dime out of his coin purse that his mother gave him for milk money. He got up from his seat and walked over to the teacher, coin held out for her to take. He didn't know why he was compelled to do this, but the daze of the act felt akin to auto-pilot. The teacher, tickled, broke the silence and boisterously exclaimed, "I can't take MONEY from a STUDENT!"

The boy slinked back to his seat, embarrassed by both the loud burst of attention in front of his classmates and the seemingly groundless origin of the impulse to get up in the first place.