Aangekomen op het kruispunt keek ik naar rechts.
En naar links.
Links lag mijn bestemming.
Een dag vol kennis en testen.
De weg naar een opleiding,
en een goede baan.
Onderweg naar mijn toekomst.
Het stoplicht springt op groen.
Iik de vrijheid tegemoet.
The children were not at school. They had better, bolder, brighter things to be doing. The teachers didn't notice. They never did.
They ran out while at break, amidst the confusion of supposed bruises and teases and stolen lunches. The gates were easy enough to get past. Each girl's hair was neatly done up with a hairpin, after all.
The sky was bluer once they got out, it seemed. So they ran, ran hard, ran free, ran wild. They quickly enough leaped through the confines of urbanity and into spaces never explored before, wild forests filled with strange creatures. Each...
The children were not at school. They were in the phone booth. Both of them - Kit and Lemuel. They just couldn't keep out of that phone booth, located on the corner of Samuel and Lane Street. Lord knew why. Maybe it was because of the peanuts.
Kit was 8 and Lem was 7 and they were both s'posed to be at Lincoln Elementary. But that phone booth called to them.
"Who should we call today?" asked Kit.
"Let's choose a name out of the phone booth at random," says Lem.
So they open up the white pages and Lem...
The children were not at school. Not today with a masked gunman roaming the streets. Everyone was indoors with the doors bolted, probably hiding in closets, attics or basements.
Jess was outside in the sunshine, on the swing. Whooshing high in the air and back down, laughing aloud, breaking the silence, wondering where the helicopters were, the swat cars, armed police.
She felt as though she was the only person left on earth.
Perhaps she was.
That's what the gunman thought when he spotted her long dark hair through the gap in the fence.
He was tired by now, wanted...
The children were not at school. Where were they? Unkown. I am an English teacher at a high school near Houston and, like any other weekday between late August and early June, I was expected a classroom of childen in front on me. Not on this day. The bells rangm yet I heard niothing. I saw nothng. Heck, I didn;t even smell anything! I walked out into the hallway and talked with the other teachers. Nobody had any students in their rooms. I then saw all the princiapls talking with angry words and loud voices. They didn;t seem to know...
The children were not at school. It was an odd feeling. This freedom was what they had longed for, begged for every school night since forever. To be freed from school for as long as they wanted, to be allowed to play video games all day, to eat chocolate for breakfast and ice-cream for lunch and to make as much mess as they liked without ever ever being shouted at.
It had been exciting for the first two days, fun for the following three. But by now the heady freedom had dissolved into an aching boredom with a great emptiness...
The children were not at school. They were not at home. Monica was frantic at the thought of Danny and Eric being missing. Where did they go? It was 7:30 pm on Wednesday, the day they usually got out early and went to Mrs. Frank's for what they called "playtime" before Monica got home from work. But Shelly Frank said they never arrived off the bus, and the Principal said they didn't arrive at school that morning, and Monica's husband, Max was notified. "That bastard," thought Monica. After 3 years of being absent, Max was still a contact for emergencies...
The children were not at school. It was the first snow day of the season, and the buses couldn't get their engines started, so the Board of Education had no choice but to cancel classes. Tyler's parents decided to let him sleep in, but when he awoke at 10 o'clock, Tyler panicked. He leaped out of bed, grabbed his jeans and wiggled into them, pulled a crumpled sweater from his drawer and jammed it on over his pajama shirt, and ran down the hallway to the kitchen, all the while yelling "I'm late for school! I'm late for school! Mom!...
The children were not at school.
When the bomb went off, Mrs. Stevenson's grade four class was on a field trip to the museum. Luckily for them, the museum had a bomb shelter underneath, paid for by a very wealthy and very paranoid patron.
The parents all rushed to the school, frightened out of their minds. All the other kids were delivered safely to their families, but all the parents with a fourth grade student waited anxiously for their children who never showed up.
The principal tried to comfort the wailing mothers, while the fathers were standing around angrily, blaming...
The children were not at school. The administrators voice continued to echo tinnily in her ear, but she wasn't listening any more. The children were not at school. Their backpacks still sat on the stairs near the landing by the front door. The morning sunlight poured in through the kitchen window as she let the phone slip from her grasp to dangle from its cord, banging slightly against the wall.
She had told them to go away, to leave her alone. She turned looking down the hallway towards the front door, looking at the backpacks sitting on the landing next...