Mommy versus the big, bad world
Last night was the last evening my husband was going to be out of town on business, and I decided MapKid and I needed a treat. It had been a rocky day–dinner at the grandparents had been a nightmare, since the new food regime is not always as enjoyable as the roasted potatoes incident. Why not dinner at Central Market, a grocery store/restaurant with a huge patio and a big play area. Good pizza, some time on their playground, and then a shopping expedition to pick up dinner for the week–we had a plan.
We ordered our pizza and then headed to the play area. A handful of kids were running around, and MapKid gleefully joined the fun.
I kept a pretty close eye on things–playgrounds can be minefields, particularly when there are a lot of younger children around. MapKid has been known to blithely shove two-year-olds out of his way when particularly focused on climbing a ladder or heading down a slide.
My attention was caught this time, however, not by the gaggle of shrieking toddlers but by two older kids–brothers, clearly, with matching shocks of reddish-brown hair. One looked about 7 or 8, but the other had to be at least 10. They didn’t seem to be interacting well with MapKid–at one point, MapKid ran by screaming, apparently at Brother #1, “Stop following me!”–but this is par for the course at playgrounds, so it didn’t phase me.
For a while there seemed to be some energetic playing going on at the top platform of the tallest structure, the one connected to the twisty slide. I couldn’t see very well, but as far as I could tell it was going OK.
Until I looked up and saw that Brother #1, the younger one, was standing at the top of the stairs leading down and from the platform, his arms outstretched. MapKid stood facing him, his entire body tense, unable to pass.
My primitive Mommy brain screamed, Danger! To the Progeny!
I leapt out of my chair and nearly knocked over a couple of two-year-olds myself to get to the playscape. As I headed that way, I saw MapKid turn and enter the slide.
But by the time I arrived, breathless, at the end of the slide, he hadn’t emerged. Instead I could hear him shrieking at the top of the slide–and another child’s voice arguing.
They had trapped him, one at the stairs and one in the slide.
“Come down the slide, boys,” I said.
I must have used that universal Mommy tone that Will Not Be Ignored. Brother #2, the older one, popped out of the slide, followed by MapKid. MapKid’s shoulders were tensed up, his forehead creased. His eyes were wild, like a panicked animal.
Brother #1 popped up beside me. He pointed at MapKid. “He punched me in the face.”
Despite a year and a half of tae kwon do, MapKid is no more capable of deliberating landing a punch than he is of swimming the English Channel. He might, however, have made contact entirely by accident, or even by lashing out if he were angry and overwhelmed.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “MapKid, can you say you’re sorry?”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“You boys need to not block anyone up there,” I said. “If someone wants to come down, you let them come down.”
They looked at the ground.
“Do you understand me?” I said.
“OK,” brother #1 muttered. Brother #2 said nothing.
I turned to MapKid. “Let’s go get that pizza!” I said brightly.
He grabbed my hand and we started walking away. “It was those kids’ fault!” he yelled. “It was all those kids’ fault! They’re mean! They’re mean kids!”
I felt like we were walking on paper-thin ice with cracks emerging in every direction. “Yeah, but it’s OK now. It’s all OK now. And we’re going to get our pizza. Do you want a Dr Pepper to drink?”
Amazingly, it worked. By the time we got the pizza, he was focused on food, and then I took him upstairs to eat, to the balcony where you can see the entire store laid out before you. In the joy of watching people walking around and eating a truly awesome pizza, the moment passed.
I tried to ask MapKid about the incident this morning. He was engaged in setting up one of his races in which Lightening McQueen battles again a whole host of Hot Wheels. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I didn’t want to play with those boys.” I will try again later–there’s probably a teachable moment around here, and I need to find it.
Even if we do talk about it, I won’t ever know what really happened. But it scared me. We worry a lot about bullying, and if that’s what this was, it was short-lived and relatively mild. But the panic in MapKid’s face terrified me.
It’s at times like these I feel a primitive urge to never leave the house. To never expose myself and my son to the big wide world. To protect us all in a safe cocoon.
I can’t, of course. It would be wrong, irresponsible, abusive even, to my child to isolate him completely even out of a wish to protect him. But that means there will be other Brothers #1 and #2, and I won’t always be there to intervene. Pizza and Dr Pepper won’t always make it all go away.
It’s a big scary world, and not everyone in it is nice. Would that it weren’t so.