"I panicked!"

Students aren't allowed to chew gum; students who choose to go against this rule and are caught with gum get sent to the office to get a lunch detention slip. Being me, I have a hard time sending kids out for detentions. (Partly this is because I'm just a softie, but mostly it's because they'll be out of class for ten minutes while they get the  paperwork and lecture and etc., and they end up missing so much that they never catch up.) Anyway, today one of my students was chewing gum. I told him to spit it out and he did. Less than five minutes later he was chewing gum again. (May I mention that it was bright blue gum that was extremely strong smelling and he is completely unable to chew without opening his mouth widely...) This particular student knew not to push me twice- I usually bend the rules once, but twice and they're out. I told him to spit out his gum and he tried to lie and say he didn't have any. I told him the color and flavor and his face just lit into this shocked look of "How did she know?" And then........      He swallowed it. Blatantly. He and I just kept staring at one another. Finally I asked, "Did you really just swallow it?!" He looked at me, frozen, and blurted out, 

"I panicked! I didn't know what to do!" 

I then put my head in my hands and broke out laughing (while sending him to the office for a lunch detention of course). He tries to lie all the time about trivial things, but he can't help but blurt out the truth every once in a while and it just cracks me up. And yes, I'm still laughing about it- I hope you see the humor. :)