Texas School Suspends 9-Year Old for Threatening to Make Classmate Disappear With the One Ring

The boy’s father assured officials that his son lacks the magical power to back up his statements. “He’s a total squib.”

All joking aside, the public elementary school in Kermit, Texas has suspended fourth-grader Aiden Steward for, apparently, telling another classmate that he would make them disappear.

Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend’s head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s “precious” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”

“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy’s father later wrote in an email. “If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back.”

Indeed. Let’s face it, with a name like “Steward,” Aiden’s either going to be resisting the lure of the ring entirely or be two steps from gazing into a Palantir until he goes mad.

The school itself has declined to comment on the suspension, for reasons of student privacy. This is the third time Aiden has been suspended since August according to the New York Daily News—he was reprimanded for “referring to a classmate as black” (which, while vague, could indeed describe behavior that would require intercession on a teacher’s behalf), and for bringing a children’s science book to school intending to show his teacher its description of the solar system, which his class had been studying. The teacher’s discovery of the book’s section on pregnancy, including an illustration of a pregnant woman, led to disciplinary action.

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