Milton's Most Wanted Student Asked to Be Late to English

It has gone from paper to email to website to app, and it is still tag. That is the most honest history of educational technology I have read.

The paper looked back on the spring 2021 game. One sophomore had a relatively open schedule that week, which left long gaps for hunting. On Tuesday he waited for a target to finish his entire lunch in the dining hall, a safe zone, and tagged him the moment he stepped outside.

He went to the top of the leaderboard and became, in the paper's words, Milton Academy's "most wanted man" for a few days. On Wednesday afternoon an Instagram account leaked his schedule to the whole school. The next day a crowd gathered outside his English classroom.

He was not there. On Wednesday night he had emailed his English teacher asking to come to class ten minutes late, because of his "colossal risk of getting tagged." The teacher agreed. By the time he arrived, the crowd had left for their own commitments, and he walked in safely.

A boy asking to be late for a reason that was entirely true, and a teacher who recognized a campus emergency when he saw one. There are worse lessons than: put it in writing, and ask.

He did not win. A junior took the annual Gotcha T-shirt. The paper noted that some teachers frown on the whole game as a disruption, and that it is far too beloved for the administration to have any hope of ending it.

Our house plays tag in the yard on summer evenings. The youngest is impossible to catch because she hides behind my wife, who is a safe zone by unanimous agreement. The middle one recently argued that the kitchen should be a safe zone too. Dinner was late.

Last week the youngest asked me, in writing, on a sticky note, whether she could come to dinner ten minutes late, because the middle one was waiting by the door. I said yes. I put it in writing too.