Fourth-grader finds One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness get him suspended
An elementary school has suspended fourth-grader Aiden Steward for possessing the One Ring—forged in secret in the fires of Mount Doom, lost in the gloomy darkness beneath the Misty Mountains, only to be picked up by this small, most unlikely creature, and brought to the barren wastelands of West Texas. As reported by New York Daily News, Steward brought what he claimed was the One Ring to his elementary school in the small town of Kermit, Texas, where he told a classmate he could use it to make him disappear. It is a land of fear and shadows, this Kermit, where such tales are not taken lightly—or anything but literally.
The school’s administrators—suffering so much over such a little thing, as well as this ring he brought—sent Steward home, claiming they would not stand for such a “terroristic threat.” After all, Sauron or a 9-year-old need only this ring to cover all the lands of West Texas with a second darkness that would be nominally discernible from the current one. In what way, specifically, they certainly weren’t looking to discover or articulate. “All student stuff is confidential,” is all the principal would say, not wishing to expose herself to Ring-wraiths or reporters.
“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence. If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back,” Steward’s father Jason later wrote in an email, explaining that Aiden had just had his imagination fired by recently watching The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies. His defense fell on deaf ears, however, belonging to those who know the power the One Ring has to corrupt those around it—to fool them into thinking that they are in control, when only one truly has the power to bend it to his will. And he does not share power. And he’s 9, maybe.
Presumably, school administrators were also wary of Aiden’s father and his own terrible wizardry, which he’d used to inscribe those words inside their glowing table boxes.
According to Steward the Elder, this is actually the third time Aiden has been suspended in just the six months he’s attended the school. Previously, he was disciplined for referring to a classmate as “black,” invoking the dark magic of honesty, as well as for bringing a children’s encyclopedia titled The Big Book Of Knowledge, a forbidden scroll that contained a long-lost, secret map in the form of an illustration of a pregnant woman. Like the One Ring, it’s just this sort of knowledge that can corrupt the hearts of men and poison the minds, along with make-believe.