Monday, April 28, 2008

Anger Management

I think I may have a problem.

I have managed to tick off 3 different families...not including the lady this morning.

Last year at this time Miss-D was preparing for the Student UN. She had a substitute teacher who was "prepping" them during English class. Miss-D's group was to be lead by this substitute and the country they would be representing was in Africa. The teacher spent most of English class talking about rape and genocide...I took exception. It was not until she sent Miss-D home with 3 college papers that I lost my mind. They described in graphic detail the use of rape as a weapon. A weapon designed to spread HIV. The first paragraph of one of the papers was a detailed account of a large family being slaughtered and/or raped in their church. It talked about a father watching his son's head being removed, watching his daughters and wife being raped, and then his own brutal death.

If this were a movie it would have been rated R for subject matter alone. Most of the graphic details would never have been filmed because they were just too horrific. So I was a tad pissed that someone would give things like that to my 6th grade daughter. The Principal agreed and the substitute has never forgiven me.

Did I mention that she has a son in MonkeyBoy's class...one of his best friends...

At the beginning of this year some of you will remember MonkeyBoy's unfortunate drawing that detailed the steps for making a Mentos/Coke "bomb." The step mother of a classmate found the drawing in her son's room and dragged her step son to school the next morning screaming to the principal that she had "found Internet bomb making plans" in his room. She threw her step son and my son under the bus because she didn't know what a Mento was. She believed the Internet to be evil...or as she said "from the devil."

So...needless to say MonkeyBoy has not been invited over to her house to spend the night...not that I would let him go.

And finally this very Friday I lost my cool again. After school MonkeyBoy told me that a classmate had offered him dip during PE. I told him to stay as far away from the kid as possible. That night he had a baseball game and while walking from our car to the field we ran into this kid....well the boys did. Magnuts yelled that this kid was trying to talk to MonkeyBoy...I whipped around and spotted him. Not hard to do considering that this kid is as big as my husband. I called his name, twice...loudly. I then told him that I knew what he had done at school that day and that I was not having it...that he had better stay away from my sons and that if I heard about it again there would be consequences. I then asked him if I had made myself clear.

I proceeded to the fields and asked around to try and find out who this kid's mother was. I really wanted to talk to her...I felt like I should explain what was going on...and why I had just shouted at her son on the school playground. No one had any idea who she was or where she was...not a problem because she found me.

The first words out of her mouth were, "do you have a problem with my son?" I answered honestly, "yes." I explained what had happened at school, at which point her son started throwing his arms in the air protesting that he could not have possibly had dip since he had no way to purchase it. I looked his mother in the eye and told her, "my son was offered dip from a can that your son had in his right front pocket. They were standing over their by home plate when it happened during PE and he saw him spitting the mess through the fence."

To this she said, "you should have come to me, not my son." She was right and I told her so. I said that until this conversation I did not know who she was but now that I did I would always come to her first...stuck out my hand and introduced my self. I went on to tell her that almost ten 7th grade boys had been suspended that very day for having dip in their lockers. I asked her how she would feel if her son came to her and told her that someone had offered him and illegal substance at school....

I doubt it, but I sincerely hope that she does some serious searching through that boys things.

Of course MonkeyBoy ended up eating it on this one too, the boys on his team called him a snitch. I could have prevented that by holding my temper...

So I guess it was no surprise to the other parents this morning when I laid on my horn because someone broke in front of my in the school drop-off line. I had allowed a two car-length space between me and the next car in line so that people trying to leave the school could get out. This doofus decided to jump into that space just as a lady was using it to leave the school parking lot.

Anger management issues or an unfortunate set of circumstances? discuss.

2 comments:

buffi said...

I believe that you were entirely justified in all situations. Especially the cutting in the drop-off line incident. School traffic just about sends me over the edge some days.

Willow said...

Unfortunate circumstances for sure.

You handled all of those incidents incredibly well considering I would've probably drawn blood on at least two of them.