Dad & Grandpa Beat Up My Principal

The other night in my Italian conversation group, we did an exercise where we had to fill in the blanks using prepositions to complete a joke. The joke went something like this:

The teacher asked the student, “Did your father help you with your homework? Tell me the truth, now!”

The student answered, truthfully, “No, he didn’t help me – he did it all himself!”

This brings me to the news out of Bari that three male relatives of a student who’d gotten bad grades, including the student’s father and grandfather, went to the kid’s school and beat up the principal. Now, it’s one thing for parents to take an interest in their childrens’ education, but really…

They were angered by grades on the latest report card and by a recent ban [by the principal] on cell phones at the school he has run for the past 22 years.

Whoa, what’s this about a ban on cell phones? Ah, see, that’s probably more of what got him pummeled. Heck, with as many kids as there are that carry cell phones, I wouldn’t be surprised to read about the same kind of thing happening in the US. Because really, if it was the grades the family was peeved about, wouldn’t they have gone after the teacher instead of the principal?