P Bullied Gong-Gong

The little girl sitting next to Little Boy in class is called P. And get this... she is a Prefect (i.e., an upstanding member of the school's student leadership committee). The reason why P the Prefect has been placed next to Little Boy is that a girl prefect has been assigned to every absent-minded boy... and a boy prefect has been assigned to every absent-minded girl.

This shows that the Teacher has some grasp of child psychology. At 10, boys and girls don't mix. The boys think the girls are mean and evil creatures. The girls think the boys are irritating and smelly beasts. It's much easier to snitch on a boy if you're a girl. Judging by the awful scoldings Little Boy has been getting, I would say that P has been doing some very enthusiastic spying and snitching.

"Hmmmm... a spy.... Is she pretty?" I asked.

"No way!" said Little Boy. "She has 2 funny ponytails sticking out from behind her ears, pulled so tight that her eyebrows have gone permanently up her forehead. Definitely not pretty. Besides, she is scary. How can scary people be pretty?"

Now, P the Prefect hates Science and she proposed to Little Boy that if he allowed her to copy his Science homework, she would not rat on him. In fact, P the Prefect even devised a schedule of rates. For every 5 multiple choice questions she gets to copy from him, Little Boy earns ONE rat point. For every one open-ended question she gets to copy, he gets ONE rat point. Each rat point can be used to redeem one instance of "don't tell Teacher I forgot to bring my book/homework/art".

"But Mom... I'm still scared of her," said Little Boy. "She can be temperamental and if she's in a bad mood that day, she'll still rat on me no matter how many Rat Points I have collected. "Next time," I advised "you tell that little Russian girl spy whose meanness makes up for a lack of looks, that you will NEVER allow her to copy your work if she rats on you even ONCE."

"Hmmmm... I can do that?" he asked.

"Why not? You won't know till you try. Don't be the one to get terrorised. Let her experience some stress too huh? You can still let her copy later if she is nice to you," I spluttered.