This was the fifth year in a row that no one had died at Mr Garrick Brumpton’s school. He was the headmaster. The school had just over a thousand pupils. Statistics told him that one in a thousand school-age students die every year. Mr Brumpton’s school had gone five years on a free run. Surely the time would come.
“What a lucky five years we have had,” wrote Mr Garrick Brumpton in the final letter to parents at the end of the school year. “Five years! Statistics tell us that one in a thousand school-age students die every year. We’ve gone five years on a free run. How lucky is that!”
When the next scholastic year began, the roll was considerably smaller.