Lies about classmates
No telling what is true anymore
The boy goes to school twice a week with half a dozen other three-year-olds.
These children are friends in the sense that three-year-olds are generally friends with anyone in their immediate radius. So, when, at the end of a school day, the boy recaps all the games he played with his friends, there is really no telling who he is talking about, if that person is real, or if any of the alleged activities actually occurred.
I’ve changed the below names for anonymity, but I’m not sure the names he tells me are real anyway, so…
Sarah does not listen to the teachers. She doesn’t say please. She doesn’t say no. She thinks she is the boy’s friend but she doesn’t talk to him. He finds her perplexing (my word not his), and I have no advice for him.
Joe is fast. By far the fastest. He always runs. Sometimes he goes to the wall and then comes back. Sometimes he runs around the fence. He does not play soccer. I don’t know Joe, but I like him. I’ve encouraged the boy to challenge him to a race.
Hanna never eats her lunch. And she doesn’t share it. She does eat pizza though.
Jack hits the boy in the face constantly. Sometimes in the neck. He makes the boy sad and ignores everyone’s feelings. He does not listen. I do not like this guy.
Will tackles and takes trucks. Together, he and Jack sound like a pair of menaces, but when the boy talks about them he does so with a tone of admiration.
Chloe laughs at the boy. He doesn’t specify why, which means he probably doesn’t know. I find this wildly relatable.
I’ve interacted with the boy’s classmates in brief moments at pickup and drop-off. They seem like a delightful bunch. Parents to. So, while I’m skeptical of the stories, I still wonder…
We have an app that updates us throughout the school day. The pictures are blurry and chaotic, but also great. And I always try to guess what kid my kid is playing with.
Is that Will with the truck? Which one of these girls is Chloe? I’ll never know.
But not knowing has made me wonder about what the boy thinks of the stories I tell him. Does he know my coworkers’ names? Does he think any of them are real? When I say I’m going to get dinner with my friends, where does he think I go?
For two humans who spend so much time together, we’re miles apart in our understanding of each other’s lives, or even life in general.
As he gets older, I know we’ll get closer and our understanding of things will be generally shared. Then, he’ll become his own person and we will probably see things differently again. So, I wonder when we’ll be the most overlapped.
Because that’s the time that I will tell him he used to come home after school and make up stories about his classmates. And he will say that he has no idea what I’m talking about.
And we will both be right.
Thanks for reading this far.
- jd
And also…
Curling. Don’t get it. Speed skating. Get it and love it. Ice dancing. Don’t get it. Cross country skiing. In awe of it. Downhill skiing. Scared of it.
I don’t know why Snoop Dogg is at the Olympics. Generally, he seems like a great time. I just truly don’t know why he’s there.
Can’t get enough of the drones.
Yes, these are all just Olympic things now.
Quad God is a sick nickname.
