Old Man Grapes Interviews Banana Kid

Bryan Thompson is a 14-year-old sophomore at Colonial Forge High School in Maryland who was recently suspended for ten days because he ran onto the school’s football field in a banana suit. During HALFTIME. A ten-day suspension for a stunt that didn’t interrupt the game. That seems entirely reasonable.

NBC affiliate WRC sent veteran reporter Pat Collins to interview Thompson.

Thompson wore the infamous banana suit, and Collins, not to be outdone, dressed like a grape, in a not-so-subtle attempt to make the point that Thompson was doing nothing wrong. [...]

Students who protested Thompson’s 10-day suspension were given detention. Faced with an onslaught of criticism — from reports like this one, as well as advocacy groups like the ACLU, school principal Karen Spillman resigned on Wednesday [last month, actually -- Ed.]. All the suspensions were lifted. [YouTube]

Good Lord, that Spillman broad is comically inept. A harmless, funny stunt like that is barely worth giving the kid detention. I went to a public high school in the mid-’90s, and back then a ten-day suspension was practically unheard of. A fistfight was only a five-day suspension. You had to shoot up the school with automatic weapons to get ten days. This was back before Columbine, when that joke wouldn’t have been offensive.

[Reddit via The Daily What]