I don't play that game...

My students share a playground with students that are a couple years older...in preschool years that's developmentally the difference of wiping one's own @$$ and, well, not. Yesterday morning one such older kid decided to run over to the tire swing and perform a fly-by-shoving, sending one of my kiddos two feet over and down to the gravel sand below. My co picked up our sobbing student and tracked down the perpetrator to resolve this issue. The perpetrator ran. I picked up the chase and caught up with him for the hopeful following conversation using words such as, "You really hurt my friend when you pushed her like that..." etc... The older student didn't appreciate the foreboding questioning, so before we really got any words out he looked up at me, fire sparking out of his eyes, reached out, grabbed my thumb and proceeded to break it. That action alone sent me into a whole new realm of frustrated. I knew I needed to walk away, so I did. I wasn't sure if my co finished her conversation with "our little friend" or not but we briefly mentioned his episode to his teachers and they didn't seem to care and within the next five minutes all our kids were inside and onto the next activity so I just dropped it. I didn't want to deal with demon child.

Two hours later a teacher, we'll call Britney, pops her head in our door, demon child in tow, and asks to talk to me. I step outside the door. She tells me that "her little friend" feels really bad about what happened and that he wants HER to apologize for him and that he was playing a game and he didn't realize I wasn't playing the same game and would I accept his apology, through her? I told both of them that I didn't play that game where I try to break my friend's fingers, but yes, thanks for apologizing. I didn't want to get into the fact that he'd sent one of my friends into orbit off the tire swing. For one thing, my students were settling down for feeding time at the zoo and I just wanted to drop it. Clearly, I didn't understand where this Marilyn Manson kid was coming from, but honestly, at that point, I didn't have the time. I had 11 kids screaming for me and my co to open their yogurt sticks (which by the way I absolutely despise...whoever invented them was a complete idiot!!!!!) and Ziploc baggies fill with god-knows-what-home-made edible creations.

I thought the issue was over. I was wrong.

Today Britney comes up to me to ask if she could schedule a time to talk. Really?? Yeah, that's fine. Time to talk is set for 1:15pm when I'm putting my kids down for a quiet time. It ends up bumping up to 11:30am when she corners me in the playground...literally. I feel like I just digressed 22 years and am stepping up to the plate to face a bully. I take a deep breath. I know whats coming. (Before yesterday I hadn't really ever talked to Britney but I already get the feeling she's needy and not a little whiny about it.) K, let's get this over with. She starts with, "I guess we could talk now, since we're both out here and all...So, I just couldn't sleep last night." Me (Ever the protagonist): "Really? Cause I slept like a rock? What was up with you??" Britney: "I was just up all night thinking about how you didn't accept my friend's apology right away and how it took a lot for him to apologize. (What?! He didn't even apologize...you did all the talking for him! You have GOT to be kidding me?!!! And you use the bull$^!# line that he was "playing a game"? Maybe I've just lost all patience for this sort of reasoning or teaching philosophy or American political correctness ca-ca but at this point I was about to laugh in her face.) I held my composure and listened to her drone on about how's he's come a long way and last year he bit other kids like a vampire and how he's moved past that and he just wants to know that he's accepted and he's my friend. (Oh! so that's cool, that helps me understand, wow, I feel so much better now.) I continued to listen. Hey, if it help her sleep better... When she seemed like she'd finished, I said thanks for filling me in, that I wasn't aware of the history and that she'd had pulled me out of my classroom yesterday at a very inopportune time and I was distracted by my students who needed my help. She said she understood and thanks. I bent down at that moment to help dissolve yet another 2 year old meltdown and she awkwardly touched my shoulder and said thanks again. OK... that's cool. Weird but cool...and I say cool only because I'm begging that we are over and done with this subject of Johnny the Bloodthirsty Thumb-breaking Kindergartner.