It's all so progressive....
My boys told me I signed their summer lives away when I filled out the permission slip for them to attend our city's state-funded day camp. I rolled my eyes in the way they hate most.
"Come on, you two. Look at the schedule! You're going to learn CPR! First Aid! Bike Safety! Art! You're going to learn Latin Dancing! Healthy Ecosystems! Geeze, I had no idea this town was so liberal."
I wanted to attend the darn camp myself. But Avon customers and a stacked up backlog of life await!
Here it is, two day camp days later, and I have a dilemma. A big dilemma. My older boy, Gandalf, loves it, loves the community service portion where they pull trash from the Rio Gallinas, loves learning the hip-sway steps of the Meringue, loves the loaded nachos and green chili enchiladas they serve for lunch. He made friends! Friends who are girls! Real seventh grade girls!
"It's really like a real summer job more than dumb kids' day camp," he told me with middle-school authority. "They pay us old kids a hundred fifty dollars at the end of the summer if we show up every day."
I didn't have the heart to tell him they're paying for his complacency, his good attitude toward public property. Truancy is a big problem in dirt poor New Mexican towns, and a hundred fifty bucks goes a long way toward curbing slash dot graffiti and the smell of illegal smoke behind the train station.
But my younger boy, Harry, scowled and told me he hated it. He wouldn't tell me why yesterday evening, just made faces and tried to bargain his way out of jail.
"I'll clean the bathroom if I don't have to go. I'll brush the dog. I'll do anything, Mom! I don't wanna go!"
But I marched him across our fire hazard fields, past the taco man parked in the Walgreen's lot. His sad face stayed with me all day.
This afternoon I learned the problem, the reason he wants to pack Avon, fold laundry, and Cinderella away his June and July. Bullies. Stupid chicken peck bullies in the playground. Bullies who push and shove and call out grim reaper names. Bullies.
"Honey, did you tell the teacher?"
I hugged my boy, thought he would cry, but his body stiffened with something like disappointment mixed with unexpected grit.
"The teacher told me to ignore them. He didn't listen to me. I tried to ignore them but they keep pushing me and throwing sand at me, Mom!"
I told him he doesn't have to go back. You can teach all the right things, people. You can pretend you're making the world a better place with lesson plans about change, about the future. But until you open your eyes, take stock of the world in front of your face, take care of your own, you're just playing games.
What would you do?
Technorati Tags: bullying, Avon, New Mexico
4:55:05 PM 
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