Sometimes They Act Like They Really Do Care About Each Other

April 13, 2011

My daughter came home from school Friday afternoon and immediately burst into tears. Heaving sobbing tears.

A girl on the bus had to told her something scary was all that she managed to get out. She was crying hard enough that her 6 and 10 yr old brothers were looking on concerned. Usually they ignore the crying, which I suppose is inevitable when you cry about everything. The ten yr old will generally roll his eyes at her tears and tell her she is going to dehydrate.

It took a while to convince her to tell us what was so upseting. She finally spit out the scary folktale about the girl, Mary, who was buried alive (because her parents thought she was really dead!) and tried to claw her way out of the buried coffin until her fingernails were all chipped and bloodied.

Her brother reassured her that should she die, we would make sure she was definitely dead before we buried her. Uh, thanks? That is reassuring.

Turns out that wasn’t even the scary part.

No, the scary part is that if you look in the mirror and say “Bloody Mary” 13 times, Mary will fly through the mirror and rip your face off.

It would seem to me that saying “Bloody Mary” thirteen times in a row, while standing in front of your mirror, would be an easy thing to avoid. I don’t think I have ever had the occassion to say “Bloody Mary” once while gazing upon my own reflection. But nevertheless, this terrified my daughter. The idea that this Mary person was lurking in your mirror just waiting for you to inadvertantly say those words thirteen times.

She wouldn’t believe us when we said it was just a story. Her 10 yr old brother said he would prove it and stepped into the bathroom. She stood outside the door too terrified to even watch.

I was worried that he was going to get the the thirteenth time and let out blood curdling screams while falling to the floor covering his face with his hands. Because he does enjoy teasing her and isn’t that what older brothers do?

He didn’t do that. He calmly counted and came out of the bathroom.

See? Nothing to worry about.

She threw her arms around him and gave him a hug, which he tolerated for a few seconds before pushing her off. He told me later that even though he knew it wasn’t true, he had still been a little bit worried.

She also told me that the girl on the bus told her another scary story.

There were these people who had a little kid and they killed it and put it into a suitcase and threw it into a swamp.

Ugh, I remember hearing about this a year or so ago. So very sad. This is the reason I never have the news on tv. I don’t want them to hear about things like this. I don’t want them to think the world is a scary, unsafe place. Because I don’t think that it is. I believe that there is more good than bad. I don’t want their perceptions to be skewed at such an impressionable age.

But I don’t believe that, she quickly added.

That’s just dumb. Who’d ever do that? my 10 yr old said.

One day the things that are scary won’t be able to be solved by with recitation in the mirror. I’m thankful that for them today isn’t that day.

Baby’s First Grammatical Error

April 11, 2011

I think I have mentioned before that I have a huge calendar that hangs in my kitchen where we write everything that is going on. The kids are all supposed to write their own things that come up outside of the regularly scheduled stuff.

Last week I noticed Miles hard at work in front of the calendar. It was his friend Cade’s birthday and he had a tournament baseball game.

Miles hasn’t learned about apostrophes yet. Heck, he is still mixing upper and lowercase letters and writing his S backwards. He said to me this weekend, all excited, “Hey S looks almost exactly like a number 2!” No, not when you write your S the right way.

Anyway, I think this has to be the cutest grammatical error ever.

Weekend Reading

April 10, 2011

New post over at AlphaMom, Has Feminism Killed Chivalry.

Come on over and tell me how wrong I am for daring to use the “f” word.

Home Away From Home

April 6, 2011

You know if home were stifling hot, made of concrete, and full of boys with skinned elbows and backward hats. Wait…

It is odd, but there are almost never any girls at the skatepark. I had not realized that it was something that was predominantly done by boys until we had been to the park a few hundred times and I noticed the lack of girls.

My 10 year old son said that it is because girls don’t like to fall down. That girls cry when they get hurt.

I laughed and told him that I thought the reason there weren’t any girls skateboarding is because they were smarter than the boys. Because seriously what is the fun in falling down and getting scraped up on concrete.

The boys thought about this and agreed, that yes, that was probably also true.

Our second home seems to be the skatepark.

Miles even skateboards now. Here he is practicing some trick, which I should know the name of by now, but I do not. I do know it isn’t an ollie. Miles can already do an ollie. Something he told me he shared during “Good News” time at school. I am sure that this tidbit was met with mostly blank stares. Probably the same look you have on your face right now, too.

This is the beginner version where the metal pipe is actually lying on the ground. This is the version I like! So little chance for injury here. It’s like the bunny slope of the skate park.

Another thing about boys? Their idea of matching clothing is clothing that is near each other in the drawer. Also, my 10 yr old son has two different color shoelaces because one shoelace broke and he replaced it. But why would you bother replacing the second one? It works perfectly fine still!

These are the shoes he wear skateboarding. They are torn up, literally. They have holes in them. They are the saddest looking sneakers ever. All of the damage was done skateboarding and he is not allowed to wear his school sneakers to the skatepark. I thought it was implied that the reverse was true. But I caught him going out to the bus stop the other day wearing them.

I yelled out the front door, “Git yer hobo shoes back in this house!” I may have even added boy at the end of that sentence.

As we were leaving the park someone asked me if we were from California. I looked at my long-haired, dirty, mis-matched hippie children and laughed. California is getting a bad rap somewhere.

He Believes He Can Fly

April 2, 2011

Who is the April Fool?

Scene 1: Morning.

I repeatedly wake my 16 yr old son up for school. Fairly typical. He fully embraces the idea of sleeping to the very last moment. I call up to him one last time as I am leaving the house to get up immediately. There will be no further wake ups. He yells back to me, “I AM UP. GOD.”

The bus will be arriving in 20 minutes.

One hour and twenty minutes later my phone rings.

Hello?
Mom, I just missed the bus.
What?
I missed the bus somehow.
The bus came an HOUR ago. You just noticed?
I guess so.
Is this an April Fool’s joke?
What? No.
Are you sure?
No.

Can you come get me and drive me to school?
No.
What? You have to!
I can’t.
How will I get to school?
You can walk.
What?
WALK. YOU CAN WALK.
How am I supposed to do that?
WITH YOUR LEGS.
Is this an April Fool’s joke?
No.

And so he begrudgingly embarked on the 6 mile walk to school. I told him that if I happened by him on my way home I’d get him and drive him the rest of the way.

I could have rushed home and gotten him. But this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. He was already late for school.

So I stopped at the grocery store on my way back from the doctor. I walked idly around the store. Had a phone conversation with a friend in the the produce section.

I found him walking about the 4 mile mark.

I thought briefly about slowing down as I approached him and then when he approached the car, speeding off while I yelled, “April Fool’s” out the window.

Scene 2: Night.
Miles comes running into the familyroom in his pajamas. Throws his arms wide open and yells, “I already brushed my teeth!”

Before I had time to react he shouted, “April Fool’s. Did I get you? Did I? Hahahaha!”

Oh yes, Miles, I truly believed that April 1st was the very first time in your entire 6+ year existence that you brushed your teeth without: a) a prolonged argument over the type of toothpaste you want to use, b) crying, or c) writhing on the floor while protesting that you are not tired enough to go to bed, therefore you should not have to brush your teeth.

Instead I said, “Wow, yes you did get me! Now go brush your teeth for real!”

“What? Why? I’m not even tired yet!”

Making a Wish

April 1, 2011