A war is brewing. We must prepare for battle. We also must get our math done. At our school, we have been having a war over a sweatshirt. A sweatshirt had been left in our room and our advisor, Mr. Santy, thought we’d have a laugh and ransom it off. We offered to return the sweatshirt to its rightful owner in return for a plate of cookies.

After a week of silence, we were told that we were not going to be getting cookies. Mr. Delveaux, the other war leader, decided to play dirty. He sent some of his soldiers in at the end of the day to kidnap a plastic lizard that resides in our room. He planted the lizard in Ms. Ellerson’s room. Ms. Ellerson had previously been neutral. They were effectively entered into the war. Mr. Delveaux had wanted to join forces with Mr. Santy and his class to fight Ms. Ellerson.

After a class vote about accepting the peace treaty, we remained at war with both classes. A few spy missions went well and brought back crucial information. Our tissue boxes had been stolen. It was now a war of attrition.

After using the school’s coarse paper towels, we accepted a peace treaty from Ms. Ellerson, our noses red and raw. After exchanging a few gifts, our next challenge confronted us. We had to defeat Mr. Delveaux’s class. As with real wars, things started to get slightly out of hand. People became apprehensive when a student from another room entered theirs.

It was time for a change. Mr. Santy proposed a three way truce to save the sanity of our school. As of Friday, October 11, our school is once again a close family. We had no true losses and no injuries. We didn’t lose money or sources. We are back where we started. The boy’s sweatshirt has been returned and we still don’t have cookies. Mr. Santy had started a war and now, he’s ended it.

A war, even a fake one, teaches you a lot of things. There are the basic things: war is bad, we shouldn’t fight. There’s also that war makes you do crazy things. Stealing a plastic lizard or tissue boxes? We had a small lesson on words commonly associated with war, such as “catalyst,” “espionage” and “sovereignty.” We also discussed major wars in history. I learned that everything ends-the good, the bad and the things in between.