S

 

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She doodled it along the edges of her homework again, I noted as I looked over my daughter’s homework. It was an ‘S’ shape made of straight lines. I’d noticed her drawing it the other day. On everything. On napkins, on placemats, and, as I looked at her now, I saw her finger absently making the motions of the ‘S’ on the couch’s armrest.

While she wasn’t looking, I opened her binder and checked out the schoolwork. On all of her assignments were the odd shapes. I closed it up and slid it back into her backpack.

Later, when I couldn’t sleep, I decided to email her teacher about the doodles. It wasn’t until much later in the day that I heard back from her.

The teacher had said that she hadn’t mentioned it because all the students had been doodling. Apparently the new fad had spread to the entire school. I couldn’t tell from the tone of her email if the new fad bothered her at all.

The whole school, I thought. I remembered when I was in elementary school. I couldn’t think of a single fad that had crossed gender lines.

Before I realized it, I found myself searching the web. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but I found something. There were posts and articles from all around the world about children absently doodling the ‘S’. Religious fanatics were claiming that the ‘S’ was for Satan and that he was using the children to announce his arrival.

My daughter came home and I watched her do her homework. I realized that she didn’t seem to realize that she was doing it. It was as if she was doing it in place of chewing on her eraser.

The news, after my daughter went to bed, finally reported something about the children. Children that were comatose were also drawing the symbol with their fingers. Children all over the world were drawing the ‘S’ shape.

The internet went crazy after that broadcast. Someone posted a picture of an old yearbook with the ‘S’ drawn in it. The old picture reminded me, vaguely, of old doodles that I’d made.

Shortly after that, the drawing stopped as if it had never happened. The kids didn’t seem to recognize that they been drawing the weird symbols.

Maybe whoever caused the children to draw was looking something. Something they hadn’t found yet, somebody wrote. Maybe, in a couple of years, children will start drawing the S again.  

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