Let the chips fall where they may.

Kids come up with the best excuses... but this one takes the cake.

One of my boys brought a gallon sized ziploc bag to school with two packaged snacks in it (peanut butter crackers and a small bag of chips). He took it out at snack time and asked if he could eat it. I told him he wasn't allowed to have a snack from home at recess time (school rule - kids get pretzel and juice snack), so he put it back in his schoolbag.

When it was time to line up for lunch, I saw the same boy in line holding the ziploc bag again.

"Are you cold lunch?" I asked. (Most of our kids qualify for the free hot lunch. Others choose to bring a "cold lunch," which is a lunch brought from home.)

He shook his head no.

"Well, you can't bring a snack if you're hot lunch," I said. "You get a snack with your lunch downstairs. Go put it back in your schoolbag, you can eat it at home."

He shuffled into the coat closet and then rejoined the line.

When we got downstairs, one of my girls came over and tugged on my shirt. "He's got something in his pocket," she whispered.

I called him over to me. "Empty your pockets," I requested.

He looked at me and made a show of patting himself down.

"No... EMPTY them," I repeated.

He pulled the lining out of one of his pockets and then looked at me expectantly.

"And the other one?"

He lifted his shirttail and looked down at his other pocket. A red foil package of potato chips was peeking out. He stared at the pocket, then looked at me, then looked back at the pocket. He seemed genuinely surprised to find it there.

He then spent about three minutes tugging the bag out of the pocket. (God knows how he managed to shove it in there in the first place.)

"What did I tell you to do with your snacks?" I asked.

"Put them in my schoolbag," he mumbled.

"And....?"

"I did," he said. "They fell in my pocket."

I had to make sure I heard him right. "They FELL in your POCKET?"

He nodded.

"How did that happen?"

"I was putting them in my schoolbag, and the chips fell down," he explained.

"And they fell in your pocket?" I questioned.

Another nod.

"And you didn't know that they fell in your pocket until just now?" I persisted.

He shook his head.

I took a deep breath. "So, you're telling me that your bag of chips fell out of a closed ziploc bag and into the pocket of your pants, and you didn't notice it until just now?"

He nodded.

The funny thing is, he stuck by the story for the rest of the day. And he told it without the smiles, laughs or smirks that normally accompany a first grader who pulled one over on his teacher. I don't know whether to be impressed or scared.