It was a quiet winter morning at my small country school; this little school was the only one in the county in session due to a two-hour delay caused by expected bad weather. The teacher’s aide, a kind, blonde, jolly woman is especially observant and during worship noticed a suspicious looking man walking down the road towards the school with a firearm. As to not alarm the children and cause unnecessary chaos, she waited until the worship period was over and then told the teacher, who immediately called 911. While the teacher talked to the operator the upper grade girls formed a prayer circle, praying for God’s protective arm during the situation. Promptly after which I began making light stories up out loud about the man and why he possibly would be walking behind a school with a guy after the recent school shootings. Stupidly scaring one of the other girls coulddn’t handle real life drama like this, fixing this problem by reassuring everyone that my imagination is really overactive. We checked the front door just to make sure it was locked, though the teacher believed there was no real danger, but it’s better to be safe than sorry and soon a brown police car pulled into our school parking lot to assess the situation. A white unmarked car pulled up as well and the officers climbed out, talked then drove away. One by one more police cars drove down our little back road, including the animal control truck. The aide had noticed exactly where the rifleman went and six cars were parked in the dirt driveway across the road from our school. After fifteen minutes or so the cars left one by one. The sheriff’s car pulled up and briefed the teacher on what had happened. It was quite humorous in the end. Apparently a 14 year old boy had been going to his friend’s house to target practice with his gun because of the county schools closed for two hours. He had walked through a public parking lot of the Food Lion close by and the fact that seventeen people didn't call it in was fascinating to the officer. He called the boy “harmless but an idiot”. And also a girl at school knew the guy and the guy also related to the teacher’s aide’s daughter. Life in a small town is describable!