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I've heard enough
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“How was your day?” I ask when my daughter gets in the car. It’s 3:30, time for her to come home, do her homework, and wind down after a long and surely exciting day at school.
“It was the worst recess of my life,” she says.
I ask her about her day, and I mean the whole day, but what she hears is “How was recess?” This is because she doesn’t always make it to recess, either because of daydreaming, misbehavior, or homework issues. Thus, recess is very, very important.
Apparently, she made it outside today, because she goes into accusation mode: “So-and-so kicked me”.
“And what did you do?” I ask immediately. I know my daughter; children don’t attack her out of nowhere, she is never innocent, and there is always more to the story. The thing is, my daughter is a revisionist. She doesn’t tell what happened; she relays what should have, could have, would have happened. Trying to get the truth out of her is like extracting a kidney from a wild dog without anesthesia. The conversations we have about what goes down at the playground are complicated, confusing, and difficult, but never boring.
“I did nothing!” she says. She tries to squeeze out some tears, but isn’t very successful.
“Who did you tell?”
“Nobody.”
“What? Why not?”
“Nobody was there.”
“What do you mean nobody was there? Where was your principal? Where were the teachers?”
“Well, Mr. G. was talking to someone.”
“What about the other teachers?”
“They were busy.”
“Too busy for you to tell them you were kicked?”
“Yes.”
“Did any of the kids see it?”
“No. They were all busy. Nobody was there.”
Okay. I’ll deal with this later. Obviously, the teachers were there, they were not busy, but Isabella had reasons not to involve them. That means she did something to the other kid first.
“So what did you do before you were kicked?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Really, I did nothing. I was just standing there. Honest!”
“And can anybody bear witness?”
At this point, she stops talking, so she can put all her energy towards glaring.
You may have noticed; there is very little sympathy on my part regarding the actual kick that some other child may or may not have delivered. This happens when my detective work renders the following: Isabella did nothing, after which another child kicked her, which nobody saw, because magically nobody was there, hearing and seeing nothing. In spite of the fact that I was also not there (but really) I am expected to solve whatever problem did not happen which was seen by no one.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Someone pass the Motrin: I think I’ve heard enough.
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