Five minutes for fighting and a game misconduct

So, I broke up my first fight today. It was fairly exciting, and definitely got my adrenaline up on a Friday morning, but I don't really care to repeat it again any time soon. On the other hand, it's a hell of a story.

First hour is my plan, which means hall duty for the first five minutes of it. I went out to the main hallway like every day, but today I saw social studies teacher Greg sprinting towards the stairs at the north end of the building. It's never a good sign to see a teacher sprinting.

I sprinted after him. Behind some lockers, I saw two prone bodies, joined at their heads, and a group of other kids gathered around watching and yelling. Girl fight. A lot like hockey, but with more grabbing and scratching and clawing. Greg got there first and tried to pull them apart, but they wouldn't let go. I was a couple strides behind, trying not to spill my coffee. When I caught up, I grabbed hold of one girl who had wriggled away from Greg. We both tried to separate them. "It's over. Let go." They wouldn't. We pulled a little stronger to separate them. I heard the sound of hair tearing.

Finally we got them apart, but they tried to get around us and back at each other. Each of us backed one of the girls toward lockers on either side of the hall and had to dance back and forth a bit to keep them from getting around us. And as if that weren't enough, once the girl I was restraining finally calmed down, she asked me if she could go to class. Ha! She was clearly less experienced at this than I was.

So Greg and I marched the two down to the office, with a group of girls in tow to give their statements to the administrators. Since I really didn't ever know what precipitated the altercation (I heard later someone called someone a whore, but most of what I heard at the time was in Spanish), I left as soon as I could.

And you know, I think that might be the last time I break up a girl fight. Boy fights are probably so much simpler. Two or three punches, someone gets dropped, and that's the end of that. Or maybe someone just needs to teach these girls how to throw a punch. Anyway, lesson of the day: girls fight dirty.