Only in America: Put down the pencil!

A second-grader is suspended for pretending his pencil is a gun — and more in our collection of strange revelations about the nation

Put down the pencil!
(Image credit: Thinkstock/iStockphoto)

A Virginia second-grader was suspended from school for pretending to be a Marine and making "gun noises" while pointing his pencil at another student. The father of 7-year-old Christopher Marshall thinks the school's zero-tolerance policy for weapons goes too far, but a school spokesman disagreed, calling a pencil "a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made."

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Samantha Rollins

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.