When is a pencil a gun? Here we go again....

"It's sad when schools can't tell toys from terrorists."

So writes Kerry Dougherty in today's Virginian-Pilot.

She added:

Isn't it fun having the whole country chortling over news leaked out of our little corner of the world? We're a national punch line again, and this time we can't blame Pat Robertson or PETA.

Perhaps you heard. A pair of second-graders were suspended this week from Suffolk's Driver Elementary School.

For the crime of being boys.

On Friday, these two 7-year-olds pointed pencils at each other and made shooting noises. By doing so, they triggered Suffolk's Code Hysteria and automatically were bounced from school for two days.

Many are shaking their heads at this latest example of political correctness run amuk but Ms. Dougherty expressed it so much better with her humorous yet sadly truthful narrative:

Did Suffolk's pint-size pencil-slingers stab each other with their No. 2's?

No, they didn't.

Did they bring actual weapons to school?

Nope.

Did they threaten to annihilate their class with their make-believe pencil guns?

Apparently not.

They were caught at play. Using their little-boy imaginations.

When we were kids, we picked up sticks and used them as guns while playing cowboys and cowgirls. We were outdoors. We were using our imaginations. We were being kids.

Sometimes it's hard to be a kid these days. Zero tolerance once again raises its head in the education system.

Read the rest of Ms. Dougherty's op-ed. She applies something that appears missing in much of this hoopla ... common sense.