I broke up my first fight today. Here's how.

Tired and incoherent (my new physical and mental status quo), I was trudging down the building's front steps when I noticed an unusual mass of kids and cops right in front of the school. Normally cops patrol the front street and the T stop when school gets out, but something out of the ordinary must have been going on because all of the cops were clustered around one small area. It wasn't long before I heard the school headmaster, a tall, burly man with a booming voice, yelling at the kids to "get the hell out of there."

Because I am often mistaken for a student, I figured I should probably take his advice to heart; I hustled to join the mass of students streaming from the site, absentmindedly noting the flood of curses issuing out of kids' mouths as they protested the headmaster's directive. I kept walking until I had almost reached the end of the block--when all of the sudden, my heart dropped.

There in front of me pulsed a huge circle of kids chanting. As I strained my head above the circle, I could see in the center the outlines of two girls attempting to strangle each other. I looked all around, but to my dismay, all of the cops who normally patrol the intersection were otherwise occuppied in whatever was happening at the front of the school, and there wasn't another adult in sight. I took another look at the girls and before I knew it found myself plunging towards them through the crowd. As soon as I reached them, I grabbed a hold of each of their arms and commanded them to stop. As I struggled to restrain them, I vaguely registered the word "teacher"floating through the crowd as the circle started to dissipate.

Then, to my astonishment, the girls stopped fighting. Within miliseconds of pulling away from each other, both girls were whisked away into the crowd by a swarm of friends--but not before I saw that each of the girls was bloodied and missing clumps of hair. I tried to suppress a nauseous upsurge as one of the girls turned to glance at me; blood was trickling out of her eye, and it looked like parts of her face had been gauged clean out. The fight must have been going on for a while. By the way the girls stopped fighting so quickly, I could tell that they must have been somewhat tired of fighting. I would have been too, if I were in their condition.

As soon as the fight stopped, panic replaced adrenaline. What to do now? The fight was over, but the girls were quickly disappearing and I didn't know any of their names. I was sure there must be some type of protocol to follow in cases such as this, but I was totally unaware of what that was. Operating on default mode, I called my mentor teacher and left her a somewhat incoherent and slightly hysterical message. By the time I finished talking, the crowd had almost entirely disappeared. Finding myself almost alone, I did what I always do when in semi-hysterical states of panic: I called my mother.

After spilling out my situation, I listened to her maternal clucks and cooes until I felt somewhat calm again. In the middle of that conversation, I spotted another teacher who works at my school but to whom I had never introduced myself.

"Mom, just a minute," I said abruptly, right before I attacked the teacher with an onslought of questions regarding Fight Protocol. His response was surprising.

Apparently, because they or the students could get hurt, teachers are not supposed to physically intervene with fights. Instead, they're supposed to stand aside and call in either the school authorities or the police. Wish I would have known that before I put my life in jeoperdy. Oh, well. I suppose 911 will have to wait until next time--although, when I think of the state of those beautiful girls' marred faces, I fervently hope there is no next time. At the same time, post-fight me is a tad bit (guiltily) exultant that I might be capable of exuding teacherly authority after all.

Now I just have to figure out how to channel those authoritative instincts in a classroom. Sigh.