The year was 2005. It was a calm sunny morning; I was in elementary school but at the time of writing this of course I am not anymore. My name is Nathan and I am in the sixth grade in Graduating however in a few short months. It was one Friday Morning in March, the time was 10:45 am. and we were all lined up and going to the gymnasium for our annual an all-school assembly.
Now we usually have around three School assemblies, One during the beggining of the year, one towards the middle of the School year and the last towards Graduation. Anyhow today as hundreds of students were seated close together laughing and giggling at each other, the Principal had ordered for us to give the guest our undivided attention.
I looked up and for the first time I had Noticed that there was a man on the stage, The man smiled and gave out waives to each section of students that were seated before him. The man was wearing a Black Top hat and had on an orange shirt with the words “Educate” On the middle of the shirt alongside a book, and had on a pair of blue jeans, His smile faded as he grabbed the microphone and spoke into it “Is this working? Hello, I repeat hello?” once the man was fully satisfied the mic was working, he stepped up to it again and began talking to us about the safety of stranger danger”, Now most of us already know the dangers of that and who we can trust and who we shouldn’t.
How important it is to not trust “strangers” Sometimes of course you can but you shouldn’t always and even if you think you can trust someone you should still be weary of them just in case. One of the most important messages the man tried to tell us was don't go into cars with people you don't know. Now that I say is great advice, because why would you want to get into the car with a stranger?
You don’t know the person and more than likely it’s a trap to kidnap you or worse. He Then took a pause, “Well look at me talking to you kids about stranger Danger and you don’t even know who I am? This is what I am talking about.” He laughed awkwardly. *The kids just stayed silent.* “We’ll lets fix that shall we? Well you may call me Dan. The man said. Not that this is really important but it’s good to know.
The school only had about another twenty minutes to go before the final bell rang and we'd be able to go home. Dan walked around the gym at us and he pointed to a girl and a boy to come up on stage. He wiggled his figure in a jester to come upstage, so the two students did as told. Dan asked if they knew each other. The girl student spoke up and said they did not. "Excellent that’s good" Dan said as he told the girl to step into the hall with the boy right now. The closest exit door was close to the stage. There was a mini hallway next to the school gym’s door exit. The girl Looked up at Dan and said "No.” and she got scared because she refused to do what the man told her to do in front of everyone.
The boy stared at everyone and was embarrassed, He took it upon himself and grabbed her hand. She got spooked, and tried to tell the boy to get off but the boy got a strong hold on her and the girl had shoved the boy, he fell off the stage and he started to cry, Dan watched the students and teachers and reassured everyone that everything was Ok. And he wanted to ask the boy a question. The boy upset looked at Dan and the students in the gym and was afraid. The boy looked at Dan and suddenly Dan’s facial expression changed from a good guy to a sinister maniac in the matter of seconds.
Dan grabbed a hold of the boy and started to run to the exit door as fast as he could. Just then the school’s principal had intercepted the two by getting in front of the exit to the building. And yelled out " What are you doing? really loud and angry. The students all looked at the principal with a confused look, the teachers were all giving the same looks. The principal then said "that Jungle Terry was supposed to be the school assembly and this guy he had absolutely no clue who he was or what he was doing at the school on this day, he was trespassing.
The principal had called the police and the school went on an immediate lockdown. The Principal reported Dan to the police, and the police got back to him a few days later saying "we have some unfortunate news to share, It seems that other schools reported a man by that name as well along their districts and he does the same thing by trying to get two students up on stage a boy and a girl.
He attempts to then try to kidnap students and take them away. He supposedly parks his van close to the back exit on purpose, luckily, he wasn't able to get any student at any of the schools but we’re now on higher alert and he will get caught soon and taken to jail. Unfortunately though we haven’t captured him yet and he's still out there somewhere. Like I said at the beginning of the story, I am an adult now and I have not heard if “Dan” Has been arrested for his crimes yet or not? Hopefully he was caught.
But if not, I hope he changed and doesn’t do that anymore. But I have a strong feeling people like that don’t change, they go from bad to worse. He may for all we know moved on from kidnaping to human trafficking. Perhaps one day, I will turn on the news and hear a horrible story about him and hopefully on that day he gets what’s coming to him. But I can assure you all that, that day is not today.