The Solution

By Audrey W.

Roy hung up the phone in the dayroom and slumped against the wall. Johnny sat at the table behind him, where he had been trying to decipher what the senior paramedic was talking about and to whom.

“Everything okay?”

DeSoto turned around and gave a wan smile. “Yeah.”

“Who was it?”

“Joanne.” The blonde man walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. He sat down across from Gage.

“Is she okay?”

A nod.

“Kids okay?”

Once again, a nod.

Johnny sighed in exasperation. “Roy, would you tell me already? You’re gonna eventually anyway, so you might as well get it over with.”

“It’s nothing, really. Just that Chris had to go to the Principal’s office today.”

Gage sat up, concern on his face. “Oh yeah? What’d he do?”

A smile spread across the older man’s face. He sat forward and clasped his hands together. “Well, it seems that the kids in Chris’s class were talking too much. So his teacher asked each student what they thought a solution to the noisy problem would be.”

“Yeah. . .go on.”

“My son stood up and told her she should take a few days off, get a substitute that’s mean and then they’d zip their lips.”

Johnny cocked an eyebrow. “He got sent to the principal for that?”

Roy snickered. “It seems as though she took it as sarcasm, when the poor kid meant it sincerely. Joanne said it sounded perfectly sensible to him, and he doesn’t understand why he got in trouble either.”

Gage snorted. “It sounds like the teacher needs a few days off. The kid’s probably on to something.”

Roy nodded in agreement.

“You gonna punish him?”

“Nah. These are the kind of moments that make a dad realize just how special his kids are.” He shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I wonder how Cap would react if we told him to take a shift off and get a substitute the next time he’s freakin out over a Chief McConnike visit.”

Roy grinned. “You’re not eight-years-old. You’d never get away with it.”

“You’re right.” He pushed his chair away from the table. “Ready to make a run to Rampart for supplies?”

“Let’s go.”

The men walked out to the squad, each secretly giving Chris’s idea a thought in the Hank Stanley/Chief McConnike situation.

My daughter suggested this idea to her teacher, but she got praised for having a good idea. I just thought of teachers I had in the past that I could see taking it wrong and getting mad, so I wanted to go that way with it. At first when my daughter told me, I had to grin. And even funnier was that the next day they had a substitute. It was coincidence, but I told her maybe the teacher took her advice! lol