Texas Boy Suspended For Saying He Could Make Classmate 'Disappear' With 'Lord Of The Rings' Sorcery

The ring little Aiden brought to school may not have been the true ring of power, but it had enough controversy to get him suspended from a Kermit, Texas, school.
BY Nicole Hensley
NY Daily News
Feb. 02, 2015

Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.

“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”

The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.

“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.

Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend's head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s "precious" in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”

“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy's father later wrote in an email. "If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."

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