Walkin' the Ceiling

My last block of the day generally has low turnout, but has been slowly picking up. Roughly 14 of 25 students attend this block. When students try to walk in late, I ask them for passes, and if they do not have them, I tell them to come back with one. Regrettably, this results in students leaving school for the day. Sometimes I feel that I should let them into the room just to keep them out of worse possible situations outside of school.

This Wednesday I had about five students try to walk in over thirty minutes late, and I turned them away.
One student, Frederick, said, "Fine, I'm going home, later Mr. Cassidy."
I wished him well and continued the lesson. Twenty minutes later I heard my name called a few times and I looked around for the student asking questions. As I prepared to remind the class to raise their hands I noticed the student I had turned away hanging outside the window of my classroom shouting my name. I walked to the window that stands two stories above the ground, and peered out as the student hung precariously between scaffolding and my window.
"Mr. Cassidy, I came to class," he said.
"Do you have a pass Frederick?" I asked.
"No, I came to class!"
"I have to call Security Frederick, you are putting yourself in danger."
"But I came to class, Mr. Cassidy!"
Security came over the intercom with a five minute response time, the fastest yet, "Do you need security Mr. Cassidy?"
"Yes, there is a student on the outer wall of the building outside my window."
"What? Does he think he is superman?" asked the officer.
"Either that or spiderman."

After thinking about it, it kind of made my day. Sounds like something I would have done in high school.

I had forgotten about this occurrence until my brother and I realized that we had both had paper balls thrown at our backs while teaching this week. That memory triggered the superheroric antics that happened in the same class a few days later.