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2012-03-29

Maybe both





Mental Health
Chapter five, still.
The meeting was distinctly uneventful. The kid's parents were ushered into a surprisingly small and crowded office. It appeared to have recently been in serious disarray, then artificially and hurriedly neatened. The tidiness clashed with the principal himself, who looked like he had undergone the same treatment as his office, but perhaps less successfully so. The parents, had they been asked to describe him after their meeting, might have said that he seemed wooden. A nice-enough, overworked man.
As for Principal Brink, he only hoped that the nervous sweat in his armpits wouldn't show until after they had left.
The formalities first: the kid was doing well (actually very well) and definitely wasn't in trouble. In fact, the principal said, forcing himself not to bite his lip, this school and the public middle school where the kid would go weren't really equipped to maximize the potential of highly gifted students, as good as these schools were for average and struggling students. Then he was finally able to truly, deeply mean it when he said that he was pleased to announce the opening of a nearby charter school which was especially for kids like the kid. He expressed his recommendation that they seriously consider enrolling their child as soon as the new year.  He gave them the brochure and they thanked him and said they would research it, and they left.
The floodgates of sweat in his armpits had burst, but Principal Brink had done it, and now he would wait. He put a celebratory crack in the office blinds, and nervously relished the slits of sunlight shining onto his desk.

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