Can you sense my red cheeks through the internetz?
Yep, they're red.
It seems there was no attack after all.
I was all outrage and and attitude with Eldest when he got home. I gave him that pinning outranking officer mommy-stare like,"You betta tell me the whole truth or else it's the brig for you."
I asked him point blank if __________ had attacked him at track.
He looked at me, mirroring my eyebrow arch...
Then he laughed.
"No. We were playing. It was all jokes like when I play with Li'l Man. We were having fun. We were wrestling. Why?"
Oh. Shit. I had forgotten the rules:
Scout Honor's Universal Laws of Insidious Rumors
Telephone Syndrome: Repeated information may vary
Grain of Salt: Consider the source. While my friend is trusted, perhaps the information that was funnelled through a middle school yap morphed the information.
Best Friend Jealousies: Information magically becomes more negative when one's perception is filmed with jealousy or emotion or misery. Yep, misery loves company.
Middle School Drama: Said information then spins on the axis of pre-teen angst and hormones with a side of pimples and morphs beyond recognition.
Benefit of the Doubt: Yep, poke my sleeping mama bear and all logic and common sense goes out the window. I had already tried and convicted the little shit totally innocent, polite, and apparently reformed young man.
In short, I suck.
I had some explaining
and listening to do. I got
the whole story. I was debriefed.
It seems all of the above rules came into play. It seems _________ did ask for help on his homework--you know the kind where one doesn't do his homework and asks at the lunch table before said class if everyone will help him with the answers.
Ummm...so that's not cool, but not unforgivable. He chose the wrong strategy to get his work done. Everyone makes mistakes.
It seems the group was mad at him because he asked this. It seems there was also another drama afoot that I won't mention except that it clearly didn't involve my son and this kid became a scapegoat.
In short, Eldest said
everyone was mad at _________.
Man!
Everyone is one unforgiving bastard.
Everyone?" I asked. I was starting to feel now that this kid was the victim, not Eldest.
"Yes, everyone."
"Even you?"
"Yes."
"Why are you mad at him?"
He had no answer.
Ah, enter in gang mentality. He was mad at the kid because his best friends and everyone else was mad. And they were mad because the other friends were mad.
And why they were mad? Dunno. It was a complicated, emotional, illogical, messy middle school chain reaction.
Now, I really felt bad for _________. This was wrong.
I spoke in depth, from
recent personal experience, that it seemed like ________ wasn't getting
a fair shake. I added a lot of "How would you feels" and "What do you think is rights."
Yep, I transferred my war crime guilt on him.
Then, I suggested since he wasn't really mad at __________ that he should call him up and let him know that he wasn't alone, that Eldest wasn't mad and he still had a friend that wouldn't take sides. In short, be a good ally and extend the olive branch.
I told him to be like Switzerland.
Then, I explained what that meant: World War II, neutrality, etc.
CG muttered under his breath that we all know what happened to Switzerland. Yep, neutrality and passivity ended in a high-holy evil fascist dictator taking over their country while they became mewling minions of the evil mantra.
Whatever. I was going to fix it.
So he called up _________ and said although everybody was mad at him, he wasn't and he was still his friend.
__________'s response was, "What?! Everybody is mad at me?"
Oh. Shit.
Apparently, ________ knew nothing about it. So we had harshly let him know his social stigma.
It was an emotional ambush.
We let him have his England under fire bomb attack situation without preparation. It was an unexpected twist in this skirmish.
Yep, we broke neutrality and displayed flawed tactics by inadvertently passing on another rumor intelligence that, "Everybody was mad at him." We were the Kamikazes.
Many middle school war ribbons should go to __________.
He politely thanked Eldest for telling him and told him he appreciated his friendship.
Nice. Not only did I convict him one day. I pushed for Eldest to tell him the bad news. He was Pearl Harbor and we ambushed him like the best. Call us living torpedoes.
Eldest was the Mussolini to my Hitler.
It turns out I forgot a rule:
Keep your mouth shut if you don't have anything good to say.
Oh, and I am sure there will be shoot the messenger implications as well as traitor sentiments on the other side for Eldest.
Damn. I forgot how complicated and political middle school can be. It's like walking through a mine field while negotiating peace treaties.
Yep, I forgot that middle school was mostly about social learning.
Social schooling that I should leave to the middle-schoolers.
I can help, but I need to let Eldest find his own path. His own fighting position. I need to let him choose sides and made amends when they are needed on his own timeline and with his own assets.
Once again, I need to step back. He needs to learn those rules I mentioned all by himself.
I need to stick to parenting strategy and instill in him good leadership traits and then let him implement his own tactics.
Yep, last week I was a bad General Mommy.
Lesson learned, my comrades. Lesson learned.
So then my questions is does this mean high school will be a social nuclear bomb with teen angst fall-out?
