A Troublesome 12-Year-Old

When I was teaching 11th grade at Simon Sanchez high school at Hagatna, Guam, I dealt with some 17- year-olds who made me *very* grateful for the fact that I'm over six feet tall with a pretty big frame. Deterrence can be priceless.

I recently read about a *very* scary 12 year old, who was attending a school, well over a century ago, in a country, far, far away. His homeland had recently become a part of a much larger country, and this kid's teachers were very strict about their students learning the language of the empire and not their native tongue. This irked young Josef *bigtime*. So, one day, he lured the teacher into an empty classroom, and (backed up by a couple of 18-year-old friends) told the teacher that if he didn't change his ways, Josef and his buddies were going to kill him. (That is far worse than anything I ever heard at either SSHS- or UAHS.)