You know what I need to remember? I need to remember that intransigent gloomy feelings are more likely to reflect the state of my immune system than the state of the universe. That post I wrote earlier this month about feeling physically exhausted by the torrent of verbiage from my youngest children? I was coming down with a stomach bug. That post from last night about hurtling toward decrepitude? I've been coughing bronchitically all day. (Stella is better, by the way. Thanks for your concern and suggestions; she has bounced right back. In fact, she is running laps around the house as I type.)
In my enervated state I've been rereading parts of Curtis Sittenfeld's book Prep. I love that book. It makes me squirm and it makes me laugh and it makes me remember things I thought I had forgotten about high school.
One thing that nobody forgets about high school is that many high schoolers are a little bit crazy, and that girl-flavored crazy is different from boy-flavored crazy. Having a high schooler of my own has brought me up close and personal with certain elements of boy-flavored crazy. Thank THE LORD, it's nothing too alarming. But I have this observation to offer up: boys are weird.
Have I posted about this before, about the strutting/smackdown cycles? I find it physically uncomfortable to listen to my son talk to the kid next door. There's nothing profane, nothing really out of line -- it's just that boy conversations seem to include a lot of "I'm really awesome; too bad you're such a dork."
This is true of his conversations with Scouts (and these are good kids, let me stress -- I am really impressed with the older Scouts in his troop), with brainiacs, with band kids -- there seems to be this unrelenting need to dig at the other guy. Of course it's not the sole focus of the conversation, but it usually seems to be lurking.
I would lose my mind in a hurry if my friends talked to me like that. Some kids, I think, come pretty close to it.
Last night Elwood and I went out for a chat, and we were sitting near a TV showing an Anderson Cooper special on bullying. One pompous man was saying with certainty that bullying happens because parents are falling down on the job. "These kids are witnessing this behavior at home," he said emphatically, "and they're bringing it to school."
And I thought...yeah, maybe? sometimes?
Four years ago an unhappy parent came knocking on our door. Her son had been walking to school with our son and a neighbor kid. She felt that they were bullying him. We were appalled. We talked at length with him. His side of the story was more complicated. "He dishes it out," our boy said indignantly, "and then complains to his mother when we give it back to him. His mother babies him! He laughs about how she believes everything she tells him, and then he makes up more stuff to tell her."
I didn't know then, and I don't know now, how to intervene in a situation like that. I do police conversations that take place in my house, because there's a different power dynamic with an older brother than with a peer. "Be kind!" I say, more often than I want to admit. "If you can't say something kind, than shut up already!" (Jamie Gladly: Providing Quality Mothering Since 1996.) Jumping into peer relationships is not so straightforward. I'm sure that mother from four years ago thinks we handled the situation badly. Did we? I still don't know.
An acquaintance of mine feels strongly that weapon play is a bad idea. She feels so strongly about it, in fact, that her children are strictly forbidden to play with weapons: no toy swords, no pretend guns, no weapons ever. Guests in their home are not allowed to have pretend battles, even mutually agreeable no-contact battles. To me this seems -- not to put too fine a point on it -- crazy. I used to confiscate all the guns that entered my home. My boys would nibble their grilled cheese sandwiches into gun shapes and pretend to fire them across the lunch table. I am persuaded, little as my pre-children self would want to agree with this, that interest in weapons is pretty hard-wired for young boys.
What I don't know is whether the conversational jockeying for prominence is the same kind of thing. I am feeling a little shy about posting this, because maybe nobody else is noticing this phenomenon? I hope not. Tell me what you think, ladies. And gentlemen, too. If you are one of the approximately three men who reads this blog, I'd love your perspective. Did you jockey jocosely? Did you outgrow it? Did your mother try to make you have tea parties and did it scar you for life? I'm all ears.
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