The High Price of Gas

We all know what it was like going to school and dealing with social pressures. Not drugs and alcohol, just all the mundane irritations of staying "cool" and keeping friends. I'm starting to think it's harder even to be the parent than to be the child.

Sure, childhood has lots of wonderful things about it. You make "best friends." You have wild adventures on the playground. You get some great grades, like a 100 on a spelling test. You read your first book. Childhood is packed full of those kinds of memories. But childhood also has its fair share of trama ~ usually in the form of being teased for something, often times out of your control. For me, the memory is actually still so full of embarrassment, I don't even want to share it today. And I'm certainly not going to share Thom's for the same reason.

Well, Kara had one of those days this week. While walking silently down the hall with the rest of her class, Kara did not remember the social rule - "we don't pass gas at school". Her sad little words to me were "It was so loud, Mama." Evidently, everyone heard it and no one could stop talking about it. Later in the day Kara even overheard two of her friends, girls, talking about it. A day later, two of the boys are still talking about it.

Last night we talked about this and reminded her that EVERYONE passes gas, but we all try not to do it in front of others (well, MOST of us try not to do it in front of others, anyway ;-). At one point in the conversation, I posed the question, "what do you think most kids do when this happens?" The answer I was thinking of was "lie about it." No, Kara says "Never go back to that school ever again and find a different school?!" She said this with such hope and conviction, I couldn't help but feel badly for her. We talked some more and ultimately concluded that the kids would eventually stop talking about this and she should just move on. Tell them it wasn't a big deal and keep right on playing and being herself. So far so good, she hasn't been nicknamed "Farty Girl" and the kids are still playing with her.

The sad truth is... the idea of buying a house in a different school zone had actually crossed my mind!! Anything to keep her from feeling that awful feeling of being stuck with kids who don't like you for no decent reason. That was 4th through 7th grade for me. My big mistake -- moving to a small town where the clicks were already set in stone. And, this because my parents moved to the GOOD school district. As for Kara's issue, come on --Kids pass gas. People pass gas. We hide it while we're dating and then announce it once we're married. Why does it have to be so tramatic?

So, here I go just wanting her to be happy and have good days at school with positive experiences and relatively little embarrassment. Unfortunately, I can't safeguard her against life, no matter how much I'd love to.