The Cell Phone Incident

Here is part one of my DC story. Yes, it has to be broken into parts....

The night we left for DC a parent approached a chaperone and informed the chaperone that her daughter would be bringing her cell phone on the trip. The chaperone reminded the mother that cell phones were not permitted on the trip. The parent proceeded to flip out and stated that it wasn't in the paperwork that it was forbidden. So basically the deal came down from our principal (The Boss) that if we saw the phone we were taking it, if we didn't see it, we didn't care.

Obviously, it became an issue, or there would be no story here. We were set to visit the White House first thing. We told all of the kids over and over again not to bring ANYTHING to the White House because you couldn't take it in. Not even chaperones were taking cell phones, etc. Dumb a$$ "student" brings hers. It then gets confiscated by White House security as we are being screened. They were nice enough to give it to The Boss instead of keeping it, which they had every right to do.

Later that evening, the student appears at the The Boss's hotel door stating that her parents wish to speak with him, please call. He does, and the parents proceed to inform him that if he doesn't give back the cell phone IMMEDIATELY, they will call the DC police dept. and file theft charges. He politely took the time to explain to them that it is school policy that cell phones are not permitted. And DC is a school sponsored field trip so it falls under the jurisdiction of "school time". The parents wouldn't accept that. They threatened him again. Since it's The Boss's last year, he told it how it was and said, "You do what you need to do."

Not 30 minutes later...the police show up. The cop is laughing on her way out of the elevator. After hearing The Boss's side of the story, she laughed her way to the student's room. Even after speaking with the parent on the phone, the officer came back and told us that the parent still wanted to press charges. The officer's repsonse? "You'll need to drive the 700 miles here to file the paperwork."

The parent never showed, but we did all appreciate the laugh. So did the cop. Too bad we didn't get pictures of The Boss in handcuffs!