This morning started much like any other school day, only worse. I began the morning drill like usual, turning on the light in Vaughn’s room with a perky, “Good morning, Sunshine!” or something like that, which was answered by a pitiful groan. Surmising what was coming, I quickly made my escape to the kitchen to prepare breakfast while in the background I was treated to the dulcet sounds of Vaughn groaning, whining, and otherwise doing his best impression of death throes (I tell you, there is a future in theater for that boy) from his perch in bed.
I have grown accustomed over the years to Vaughn’s more theatrical tendencies, and have made a concerted effort to inure myself to their powers, so I wisely chose to ignore this vexing cacophony, informing him that whether he was physically capable or not, he would be finished with breakfast when the timer went off. In the meantime, Dave is making a hasty retreat to work, nearly knocking me over as he sprints out the door. Coward.
Now, I have a pretty good idea what is causing the boy’s seeming distress. He has repeatedly and vociferously shared with us how much he dislikes the Y, and the evening before while calculating that there were just 2 more weeks of school left, he quickly computed that that meant only 6 more days of the Y. I thought that particular revelation would be a comfort to him. Instead, it seems to have intensified his dread of the place.
And so it continued all the rest of the morning, with me lecturing on how there are many things in life we have to do that we don’t want to (like getting up at 7 in the morning to listen to a whiney 6-year-old), but we do them anyway. So (and this is something I say so often that I’m sure in a few years he’ll be echoing me as I say it) you can either be miserable and do it or find the positives, focus on those, and make it as fun as possible. Wheeeeee! Yeah, that’s pretty much the reaction to that erudition.
Driving him to school in the van, I’m chanting in my head over and over, “Just a little longer and you’re free. Just a little longer and you’re free,” while Vaughn, as we turn down the street to his school, starts hyperventilating, blubbering in between gasps, “I need my breafs, I need my breafs.” This doesn’t stop as we pull into the school parking lot, but only escalates, as he starts negotiating with me as if his life depended on it, “If you take me home, I promise I’ll let you rest. I’ll let you rest aaalllll daaayyy.” Right. And you’re about as trustworthy as a junkie. He continues weeping uncontrollably, and it’s getting dangerously close to time for school to start. Completely exasperated, I decide that maybe this is a good time for a breakthrough, get some meaningful insight into his YMCA phobia.
“So, Vaughn, just what is so terrible about the Y?”
Tears trickling down his face, streams of snot trailing out his nose, he looks at me red-eyed and says tragically, “BECAUSE I HAVE TO EAT THOSE HORRIBLE LUNCHES!”
That was the point all empathy evaporated from my body. These “horrible lunches” he is referring to are made to his specifications by yours truly. I am the source of his embittered outlook of the Y.
I think this is a good time to mention that when he started the school year I knew 3 days a week he was going to be spending lunchtime at the Y; so, I impassionedly threw myself into researching all kinds of books and websites for making yummy, creative, healthy lunches and eagerly started making all manner of tasty masterpieces. However, after about a month of knocking myself out only to have these works of love returned uneaten, I decided to limit my lunch lady skills to only those foods that weren’t returned room temperature at the end of the school day. This solution, theoretically, should have worked, but the key word there is theoretically. Because then came the day, after weeks of him requesting NOTHING BUT P&B sandwiches, he angrily informed me when I picked him up from school that “You KNOW I don’t like P&B sandwiches!” Obviously, I had committed the unforgivable sin of not reading his ever changing mind. Thereafter, we were issued His Majesty’s menu the night prior to his Y attendance. These lunches started taking on rather minimalist proportions, “Tomorrow I want an apple and a juice box AND THAT’S IT!” As it turns out, part of his Y aversion, particularly when it came to lunches, was *GASP* they had to stay seated until they were finished eating their lunch. Now it was clear to me why the Y was synonymous with water boarding.
Back in the van, I assured Vaughn that he was going to school, and he could either go in crying or take it like a man (okay, I didn’t use those actual words). He is self-conscious enough that the mere idea of bawling in front of his peers was enough for him to “need my breafs” and suck in a few shuddered intakes of air, steeling himself to bravely face his fate.
As I’m escorting Vaughn to the front of the school, hands clenched and a strained look on my face, I hear what sounds suspiciously like weeping off to the side of me, and I see an older female version of Vaughn crying uncontrollably as her mother, with a remarkably identical expression to mine on her face, is pat-pushing (motherese for the act of appearing to pat one’s child comfortingly on the back while at the same time pushing them towards the desired destination) her daughter toward the school entrance. As I witness this little Hallmark moment, I wonder what it is about this school that is making so many children so desperately unhappy. I say goodbye to Vaughn and restrain myself from racing back to the van, arms flailing, jumping gleefully into the air, screaming, “FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST…” when I chance to see the little girl, still howling, looking utterly abandoned, as her mom burns rubber out of the parking lot. She’s holding a fabric bag arm’s length away from her body, touching it with as few fingers as is required to still be actually dangling it, and is wailing, “THIS HORRIBLE BAG. THIS BAG… I CAN’T EVEN TOUCH IT… IT’S…HORRIBLE!”
I bet her mom made it.
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