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Robin had a certain, indefinable swagger when I picked him up from school yesterday.
I do the patented Mommy Mind Probe (about as subtle as Jack Bauer's torture techniques on Twenty Four) and eventually it emerges that he's had a confrontation with an 8th grader: "And tomorrow there's gonna be a fight."
Of course this is exactly why I struggled so hard to keep Robin at the International School of Monterey.
Prissy has its downside: shove another kid in the playground – threaten to shove another kid in the playground – and you're immediately hauled off to the principal's office, sentenced to five days of hard detention, sharpening pencils and reading Dr. Phil's Creating Your Life From the Inside Out. I railed against this kind of injustice: boys are boys, pushing other boys has been part of the playground lexicon since the earliest Neanderthal kiddies first frolicked in a dead wooly mammoth's pelvic girdle. (And sometimes girls are boys!) Labeling perfectly normal behaviors as "deviant" whipped me into a Rush Limbaugh-esque frenzy: Hey, you pansy-livered Liberals! Go cut out some more Hillary Clinton paper dolls and leave my kid alone!
Plus, you know, Robin liked to push and I was tired of all those morning meetings with Dr. Volante, the ISM school counselor. She dressed in a paisley granny gowns, parted her long, thin hair in the middle and chatted interminably in a high-pitched cheerful voice. There are certain fashion choices one should not be forced to contemplate before 5pm with a stiff cocktail under your belt. Chat should be outlawed altogether.
Still. One wants one's children to be safe. One fantasizes that the best childhood is a protected garden.
"So, what's this all about?" I asked Robin.
He squared his shoulders, squinted at the road. "I can't tell you. I'm not a snitch."
Oh, boy. The Code of Silence, neatly dividing insiders from outsiders.
And parents are the ultimate outsiders.
When cajoling didn't work, I resorted to threats: "If you even want to look at that Playstation again before you're twenty-one, I suggest you tell me everything. Now."
So. Some skinny little punk comes up to Mike D. at recess and takes his lunch money. And Robin intervenes somehow and gets it back. And skinny little punk says, "Fine for now shithead, but look out – tomorrow you're dealing with me."
And I'm thinking, this sounds like an empty, face-saving threat to me, but what if the kid's father is the head of Tony Soprano's west coast operations? How seriously should I take this?
It ain't easy being Mom, I'll tell you.
In other news, I am reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, and not liking it very much. I mean, how much weight can you give a person's grief if their first reaction is to note the timestamp on the Microsoft Word file they immediately opened to record their reaction? Her prose is just so fucking constipated. One longs for Joan Didion to put on that diaper and make that mad dash to the Orlando airport. She'd be a better artist for it.
I do the patented Mommy Mind Probe (about as subtle as Jack Bauer's torture techniques on Twenty Four) and eventually it emerges that he's had a confrontation with an 8th grader: "And tomorrow there's gonna be a fight."
Of course this is exactly why I struggled so hard to keep Robin at the International School of Monterey.
Prissy has its downside: shove another kid in the playground – threaten to shove another kid in the playground – and you're immediately hauled off to the principal's office, sentenced to five days of hard detention, sharpening pencils and reading Dr. Phil's Creating Your Life From the Inside Out. I railed against this kind of injustice: boys are boys, pushing other boys has been part of the playground lexicon since the earliest Neanderthal kiddies first frolicked in a dead wooly mammoth's pelvic girdle. (And sometimes girls are boys!) Labeling perfectly normal behaviors as "deviant" whipped me into a Rush Limbaugh-esque frenzy: Hey, you pansy-livered Liberals! Go cut out some more Hillary Clinton paper dolls and leave my kid alone!
Plus, you know, Robin liked to push and I was tired of all those morning meetings with Dr. Volante, the ISM school counselor. She dressed in a paisley granny gowns, parted her long, thin hair in the middle and chatted interminably in a high-pitched cheerful voice. There are certain fashion choices one should not be forced to contemplate before 5pm with a stiff cocktail under your belt. Chat should be outlawed altogether.
Still. One wants one's children to be safe. One fantasizes that the best childhood is a protected garden.
"So, what's this all about?" I asked Robin.
He squared his shoulders, squinted at the road. "I can't tell you. I'm not a snitch."
Oh, boy. The Code of Silence, neatly dividing insiders from outsiders.
And parents are the ultimate outsiders.
When cajoling didn't work, I resorted to threats: "If you even want to look at that Playstation again before you're twenty-one, I suggest you tell me everything. Now."
So. Some skinny little punk comes up to Mike D. at recess and takes his lunch money. And Robin intervenes somehow and gets it back. And skinny little punk says, "Fine for now shithead, but look out – tomorrow you're dealing with me."
And I'm thinking, this sounds like an empty, face-saving threat to me, but what if the kid's father is the head of Tony Soprano's west coast operations? How seriously should I take this?
It ain't easy being Mom, I'll tell you.
In other news, I am reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, and not liking it very much. I mean, how much weight can you give a person's grief if their first reaction is to note the timestamp on the Microsoft Word file they immediately opened to record their reaction? Her prose is just so fucking constipated. One longs for Joan Didion to put on that diaper and make that mad dash to the Orlando airport. She'd be a better artist for it.
