One of my biggest fears before Katy started school was that the other kids would pick on her for being different. She’s a sweet kid, and she doesn’t understand why people can be cruel. When someone hits her, it doesn’t occur to her to defend herself or retaliate, and I honestly think that the idea that someone would do such things wounds her more than the physical pain.
“Kids can be cruel,” people say. I’ve heard it many times. But I’ve come to understand that kids, inherently, are kind. It’s adults that teach them to be mean.
I’m profoundly thankful that Katy goes to school where she does. It’s the school near to where her mother grew up, and the parents of her schoolmates are people that her mother grew up with. It’s a small school, just a few hundred students in grades K-12, and without the thuggery and bullying you see at most of the larger schools. It’s as close as you’re going to get to the atmosphere back when I went to school thirty-odd years ago, when public education was a different – and in my opinion, altogether superior – animal than it is today.
It’s a school from which KatyBeth can graduate one day, walking the aisle with friends she’s known for fourteen years. The parents of those kids are simple people with simple values. They’re farmers, mechanics, loggers and pipeliners, with a healthy dose of teachers, cops and firemen. Most of them probably aren’t even college educated. Some may call them rednecks, but in my book that’s not such a bad thing.
And the kids they raise, for the most part, mind their parents, respect their elders, and say “Sir” and “Ma’am” a lot. The teenagers act like teenagers, yes, but rarely do their shenanigans involve anything that would attract the attention of the law. And since this town is rife with cops, more often than not the responding officer knows their folks, and knows that a word with Daddy carries more dire consequences than a night in jail.
So yeah, KatyBeth attends a decent little school, in a decent little town, with decent, well-behaved kids, raised by decent folks. When she was in pre-K, she told me she had a boyfriend, the little boy who sat next to her in class.
When I asked how a pre-schooler gets a boyfriend, she told me that Eric laid out her pallet at nap time, and made it a point to tuck her in before he laid out his own pallet and blanket. He also punched the straw in her juice box at lunch time, because she found it difficult to manipulate that tiny little straw by herself.
And I told her that was sweet of him, and that’s what a boyfriend should do for his girlfriend. I also made a mental note to keep an eye on young Eric, lest the little Lothario’s attentions take a more romantic turn in the next ten years or so.
“Tuck her in,” indeed. Not with my baby, Mister Eric the Smooth.
And when her class walks to the gym or the cafeteria, invariably there is another little girl holding KatyBeth’s hand, making sure she keeps up or making sure the rambunctious boys don’t knock her down. And on the rare days when she cries when I drop her off, there’s always another little girl or three willing to play Mother Hen and comfort her until she stops crying.
But occasionally, just once in a while, you find a person for whom kindness is a foreign concept. KatyBeth’s first grade teacher is just that sort. She’s not quite as bad as some of the mean old biddies I had as teachers, but neither could she be considered the nurturing type.
As a parent, I support corporal punishment. I can count the number of times I’ve spanked Katy on one hand, and even a stern word and a slightly raised voice from me is all that’s necessary to reduce her to a quivering, sobbing wreck. But there are actions that she knows will merit a spanking, and her knowledge that I’m willing to spank her if necessary is a useful tool indeed.
And while I’m not philosophically opposed to school administrators using that same tool, it’s the fear that people like her first grade teacher will be delivering the spanking that keeps me from allowing it for my child.
All this musing was precipitated by a conversation I had with Katy the other day. When I picked her up from school, I asked her how her day went, as I do every day. And she laughed and told me that her teacher used one of my sayings that day.
“And what saying is that, Stinkerbell?” I asked.
“Well, Kyle got knocked down and skint his elbow, and he was crying,” she answered. “And Mrs. Sutton asked him ‘what do you want me to do, call you a waaambulance?’ and the whole class laughed because it was soooo funny!”
Funny, my hairy white ass.
So then I had to explain to my daughter that, yes, I’ve said that very thing quite often, but only to her, and only when I was sure she wasn’t hurt. And how would she like it if she was crying, and everyone laughed at her?
Chastened, she answered that she wouldn’t like such a thing at all, and she asked why Mrs. Sutton would say such a mean thing.
And I had to tell my child that grownups sometimes do mean and hurtful things, even grownups like Mrs. Sutton that are supposed to look after little children. It’s not a conversation I particularly wanted to have with my daughter, but an inevitable one, I suppose. I just never thought it would involve a trusted authority figure in her life.
I also told her that if Mrs. Sutton ever said such a mean thing to her, that she tell me immediately. If that ever happens, I’m going to show one cruel and insensitive teacher just what mean really is.
And that’s just if I decide to be nice. If I want to get nasty, I’ll just tell The Ex. She’ll get medieval on her ass.
