Conversation One
“He knocked me down, and I stayed calm. I didn’t even say, ‘Why do you have to be so mean?'”
The Boy and I were on our way back home, and he was explaining some adventure or other that he’d had during recess. He’s taken to playing soccer then, and he’s often telling me about what happened during the game.
“Why would you have said, ‘Why do you have to be so mean?'” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t say it.”
“But why would you have said it? Why are you specifically pointing out to me why you didn’t say it?” I suspected it was because someone had said that to him at some point.
“Well, I was playing soccer the other day with X” (I can’t remember the name) “and I tried to sweep the ball away from him. I didn’t mean to, but I knocked him down. He just jumped up and screamed, ‘Why do you have to be so mean!?'”
It’s usually the Boy on the receiving end of such things, and I’m always trying to help him see the other point of view: perhaps it was an accident. “Oh, no, Daddy, it wasn’t an accident,” he usually insists. So I asked him, “Did you tell him you didn’t mean to?”
“I tried to,” he explained with a frustrated edge in his voice. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to knock you down,’ but he just walked away from me and ignored me.”
Sometimes, I feel like the Boy can’t win: even when he’s the (accidental) aggressor, it somehow ends with him feeling like a victim.
Conversation Two
On the way to soccer practice the evening, the Boy brought up Frida Kahlo. One of his multi-age class groups (they’re called “houses”) is named after her. “Do you know who she was?” he asked.
“Was she the Mexican painter?” I asked, thinking of the uni-brow painter who did so many self-portraits.
“Mexican? I thought she was German,” he replied quizzically.
I’m not up on painters, so I just suggested that perhaps I was thinking of someone else. “Was she friends with Trotsky?” I asked, knowing the response.
“Who was Trotsky?”
Who indeed.
“A generally bad man,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people.”
He thought about it for a moment then asked, “Were they innocent or did they deserve to be shot?” He paused, thought some more, then corrected himself. “Well, I don’t mean deserved to be shot. They were just bad. Were they bad?”
From there, the conversation devolved: “Oh like Hitler?” “Who killed more?” “Who’s Stalin?” “Did anyone kill more than him?” “Mao what?”
Then I got to wondering: on the playground were these men the aggressors or the aggrieved? And how in the hell did that conversation end up there?