Just before lunch, two eighth-grade girls appeared at my office door. The tall girl was slender and tipped forward from the weight of her backpack. The short girl wore a pink headband. The tall girl said, “Can the middle school have a lock-in?”
“Come on in.” Students often stopped by with suggestions: more pizza days at lunch, better dances, homework-free weekends.
The girls parked their belongings on the floor and sat at my table. The tall girl rubbed her shoulders. “You lock us in the field house on a Friday night and we won’t be allowed to leave until Saturday morning. We’ll have music and sports and games.”
“You’d play games all night long?”
“We’ll rent a DJ so we can have a dance from eight until eleven on one basketball court. After that, we’ll watch a movie. On the other court, kids can play kickball or volleyball.”
“Don’t worry,” the girl with the pink headband said. “No R movies. We’ll rent Happy Gilmore.”
“Doesn’t it sound odd?” I said. “Lock me up so I can have fun?” I thought of the inmates I visited at the state prison.
“My cousin can be the DJ,” the tall girl said. “He’s got all the equipment.”
I pursed my lips. “What about students who decide, in the middle of the night, that they want to go home?”
The tall girl shook her head. “They can’t. It’s a lock-in.”
“What about kids who want quiet time?” I tapped my yellow pad. “You don’t want to have noise all night long, do you?” Prisons, I had read, were some of the noisiest settings on earth.
The girl gave me an exasperated look. “They don’t have to come. Or they can go to the wrestling room. We could make that the designated quiet space.” She stood. “How about it? Two teachers have already volunteered.”