Mama's Little Preshy

The other day a kid a year older than Bo came up to him happily sitting on a swing and told him he couldn't sit there. Bo obediently got up and left. Later when I found him loitering by our car, I scolded him for not being where I could see him. The poor boy can't win. When we got in the car, he told me that the boy had told him to get up and so he had. He was really quite sad about being treated that way.

My immediate reaction, "Next time, you come get me!" or "You tell him your mom said you can sit there if you want." Or some other really stupid, "I'm gonna get my mommy and make you want to kick my sissy butt" response. Without saying out loud to me what I was doing, J started offering suggestions of his own. "Or you could say, 'mind your own business, I'm Bo B, I sit wherever I want to sit!' " and other equally ridiculous responses. Okay, they weren't ridiculous, they were more appropriate than my solution. But J tends to err on the side of, kick butts, ask questions later, and I tend to try and create precious little mama's boys.

Soon enough J and I sort of met in the middle and gave Bo some more appropriate responses, and made it clear to him that what the boy had done was bullying and it wasn't okay. I could tell that Bo felt a little better in the end. But I felt sad because these kinds of things always spiral my mind into thinking about all the crap my kids are going to have to face in life. Even if they never get bullied, which is next to impossible, they still have to deal with stupid people. You may or may not know, stupid people make me feel homicida1. I personally think bullies and stupid people are often one and the same. But then, that might not be fair to some bullies.

Today when I picked up Bo from school he ran to the car before I had pulled up, a dangerous no-no that he is well aware of in his 7 month of preschool. He kind of got scolded by his very very sweet teacher and Bo got his vacant, "I'm actually raising Bowser and Yoshi right now, I can hear nothing you are saying to me" look that has been frustrating the tar out of me lately.

Then he sat in his seat and said, "I have two things to tell you after I finish buckling my seat belt."

This is huge. I have a hard time getting any info out of Bo after school. If I hear anything about his day, it's because they've had a party and he's high on sugar. Or. It's 3 days after the fact. He will start to monologue about school and I'll say, "Did that happen today?" and he gets all annoyed with me and says, "Nooooo! It happened like a year ago last week!"

So, he tells me. "Sasha" said to him, "Your jokes aren't funny and you can't tell jokes anymore."

I tell you what, right then and there I was finna slam on my brakes and go hunt that little twit down. Don't nobody tell my baby he ain't funny. Except me. And that's only after the 532nd banana knock-knock joke. That and giving birth to him gives me the right to say, "It's not funny, stop telling that joke."

Immediately I wanted to say, "Well, you tell her your mom thinks you are hilarious." But I thought twice. And then I wanted to say, "I'm going to talk to your teacher on Friday and tell her Sasha's being a twit" but I thought again and got a mental picture of J grimacing at my overt efforts to sissify his boy.

So I channeled J, added a little me, and said, "Bo, you are one of the funniest kids I have ever met. Remember how hard that one man laughed at the joke you made up? He thought you were so funny he got out a notebook and WROTE YOUR JOKE DOWN. I don't know very many 4-year-olds who can make a grown-up laugh like that." A little smile crept across Bo's face as I said these things. He looked out the window and said, "I just didn't know he wrote it down."

Then I told him, "Next time Sasha says you aren't funny say, 'Well, smart people think I'm funny.' " I figured if she was smart, she'd nark on Bo for calling her stupid and thus bring the situation to light, and if she wasn't smart, then no harm, no foul.

I'm smart. That's how I thought of that.

I wish there wasn't unkindness in this world. I really really wish that. I could even be more tolerant of stupidity if there was no unkindness. Of course, if I were completely kind, stupidity wouldn't bother me so much.

And I wish I didn't have to send my babies out into a world where there are people who actively work to bring other people down. I know they are just 4 and 5---but I tell you what, my 4 year old is just learning that not everybody says, "Wow you are so awesome, that's amazing!" to every.little.thing you do in life. And that's how it should be. He'll learn soon enough that buttoning your own pants isn't really worthy of a festival and a parade, but until he figures it out on his own, we'll act like it is in our home. Maybe we need to go to Sasha's house and have a sweater-buttoning parade or something.

I think I'll give her mom a call....