Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
It’s September, and you know what that means. Days on the beach, amusement parks, fun vacations, and 8 pm sunsets? Forget about that – It’s pumpkin spice time! Along with that and the kickoff of football season, that also means it’s an annual rite of passage, as school has started up again. Don’t worry about your children anymore, that’s the teachers’ job now. In one school in Sydney, Australia, it wasn’t just kids that came back to school, it was men in hazmat suits inspecting a meteorite that landed on their premises – until it wasn’t.
A scientist's BS meter is going off the chart. (Facebook/St Pius X College Chatswood)
Students at St. Pius X College (which is an elementary school, not a college) arrived at school to see that a meteorite had crash-landed right at their school. Unfortunately, it had landed outside, instead of crashing into the school itself, where classes would’ve been canceled after the fire was put out. It was quite the scene, with the area around the space rock cordoned off, while men in hazmat suits took measurements. It was soon revealed, however, that the whole thing was an elaborate prank. What kind of student would pull something like that? None of them, as it was actually the school itself, in an attempt to get kids excited about National Science Week.
What’s possibly even worse is that St. Pius X let the students think it was an actual, naturally occurring phenomenon for a while, not revealing until later that the whole thing was a hoax. They had experts from GeoScience Australia and a Willoughby Fire and Rescue crew on hand to answer questions about the not-meteorite, letting the poor kids’ imaginations run wild. The school attempted damage control, stating, “The event sparked imaginative and factual writing, as well as mathematics lessons exploring size, weight, and even possible trajectories through space.”
"But I don't wanna go to school!" (Navicore/creative commons)
“Oh man, I’m really excited about this!” one student proclaimed. When asked what about National Science Week he was most excited about, he replied, “None of that, I’m talking about intentionally misleading people. It’s the first day of school, and I already learned a valuable lesson: that lying to people is awesome!”
While maybe a few Aussie academics (read: nerds) were actually letting their imaginations run wild about the implications of a meteorite landing at their school, many other students were probably planning the best way to seek revenge on their school. “They want a prank war, they’ve got one,” a student said after bulk ordering whoopee cushions and fart spray on Amazon. “They’ll still be cleaning glitter from the ceiling ducts by the time the next National Science Week rolls around,” laughed another.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
