Kelly Poe Wilson

My son Clyde has a new friend in his kindergarten class; in fact, they get along so well that I was quite surprised to receive a note from their teacher informing me that Clyde had been mean to this boy: He not only took his new friend’s Sacajawea dollar away from him, but he also tossed it into the grass on the edge of the playground, from where it could not be recovered. Of course I was mortified: Up until then Clyde’s kindergarten misbehavior, while definitely a daily feature, was more rambunctious than mean. Now, however, I was presented with the distressing picture of some poor little boy diconsolately searching the weeds for his long lost dollar, all because of Clyde. The more I thought about it, the worse it got: What if this dollar had had sentimental value? What if it was the last gift he had ever received from his beloved, now departed, Grandma? (Maybe his Grandma liked the casinos.) How, I wondered, would their burgeoning friendship ever survive such a rift?

Clyde, on the other hand, was unfazed.

“It’s ok,” he insisted. “I told him he could punch me in the head as many times as he wanted, and now he’s not mad anymore.”

I was a little harder to convince: Somehow it seemed doubtful to me that a few dope slaps could serve as adequate reparations for anybody, even a kindergartner. Still, the little boy didn’t seem mad when I had picked Clyde up from school that day; they were wrestling and laughing as if nothing had happened. Even so, I was determined that Clyde feel the consequences of his actions by replacing the missing Sacajawea dollar, and soon: The two boys would be attending soccer practice together that very afternoon, and I could not imagine facing his parents without at least a token gesture of restitution.

To that end, we needed another Sacajawea dollar; luckily, we didn’t have to look very far: Clyde’s sister, Clementine, has quite a stash of the chubby gold coins. To make sure he understood that he would be the one replacing the coin, though, I showed him that we were taking one of his dollars out of his Spiderman pencil case bank before going next door to buy a replacement dollar at our local arbitrager. (True to the rapacious nature of her newly chosen profession, Clementine tried to charge Clyde two dollars for one coin.)

Next came the delivery; as I nudged Clyde forward to present the hard won dollar to his little friend I hoped that it would be enough to repair their tattered friendship. I guess I’ll never really know the answer to that question, since neither the boy nor his parents had any idea what was happening.

“I told you it was ok,” said Clyde. “We made up at school.”

I realized then that he was telling me the truth.

“How many times did he punch you, anyway?” I asked, slightly fearful of the answer.

“Two times–really hard.” Still laughing about it, they went off to play soccer.

Suddenly, as I watched them happily wrestle their way down the field, I had an epiphany: Maybe we should all solve our problems the Clyde way. I know there are plenty of times when I would have gladly taken any number of punches to the head just to get out of saying “I’m sorry–I’m wrong–I messed up” one more time. Who knows: Maybe even our world leaders might want to consider it as an alternative to sanctions; at the very least it would be entertaining. Although, come to think of it, this might be a game that our leaders have been playing all along. I can think of one leader in particular who has clearly taken a few blows to the head too many–perhaps during his glory days at Yale.

By the time you read this, National Walk to School Day will have come and gone, and with it a curious phenomenon called the “walking school bus,” an event where parents drop their kids off at a predetermined location so the kids can enjoy a “parent-escorted” walk to school. Maybe I’m missing something here, but what exactly is the point of having parents get in their cars and drive their children almost all the way to school? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the idea of walking to school– my kids almost always either walk or ride (or, in Clyde’s case, get pulled along in a trailer Maharaja-style, allowing him to alternate between greeting his adoring subjects and exhorting me to “pedal faster!”). Even so, it seems to me that encouraging parents to drive their children to a “walking” location is a little bit like circling the gym parking lot to get the space closest to the treadmill: At the very least it’s silly; at the worst, it’s counterproductive. I rather think that if organizers were really interested in promoting car-free methods of commuting, they would be promoting something I like to call the “driving school bus.”

Here’s the plan: Instead of parents driving their children to and from school every day, their children could instead all walk to a central location in each neighborhood, where the “driving school bus” would then pick them up and take them to school. I know, I know: It’s a revolutionary concept, but, in this age of global warming, it’s one whose time has come.

I may be channeling Andy Rooney here, but: What is up with all the people driving their kids to school these days? It’s ridiculous: Go to any school at dismissal time and it’s like watching the slowest, most boring parade in town. It is as if everyone decided at once to try out for a new Olympic exhibition sport: Synchronized Driving. (See each car inch ahead in the pick-up lane; see each driver take a sip from her venti latte; see each driver answer her cell phone–“What are you doing?”–“Sitting in the car behind you; what are you doing?”)

Whenever I ask people why their kids don’t ride the bus, their answer is usually some variant of the “my kids hate the bus–it’s too stinky/smelly/crazy” theme. This always makes me think back to my own bus riding days, when, because we lived in an outlying area, all the neighborhood kids had to be at the bus stop by six o’clock in the morning in order to make first bell at 7:45. And yet, even given all that, I can’t imagine ever telling my mother I didn’t want to ride the bus without also imagining her response: A glance up from her newspaper, a flick of her cigarette (everybody’s mother smoked back then) and a wry, “So, what’s your point?”

The truth is, though, that I really didn’t mind riding the bus; even back then I could tell it made me part of something larger; part of a community that didn’t, for once, only involve the members of my own family. Sure, school itself was a type of community, but this was different: This was one of those relationships forged by fire. How else can you explain the sense of comradeship that exists between people who have spent an entire week together sharing their bus stop with one deceased Holstein cow? (Don’t ask).

The sad part is, though, that I think that kind of community feeling is what the “walking school bus” organizers are after, but, just like conversation, community is something that can’t be forced: It happens where it is most natural. And for a lot of kids, there is no place more natural than the back seat of a stinky, smelly, crazy school bus–the driving kind.

In my son Clyde’s kindergarten class, his teachers convey the “essence” of each child’s day via the different colored faces they draw in their agendas: A green smiley face means they had a “good day”,a yellow face with a straight line for a mouth means they had a “troubled day”, and a frowning red face means they had a “bad day–and we need to talk.” Since this was the exact same system that was in place when my daughter, Clementine, went to kindergarten four years ago I wasn’t too worried about it; after all, when Clementine was in kindergarten opening her agenda and putting my initials next to the sea of green smiley faces was one of the highlights of my day; it was, for me, a time to mentally pat myself on the back and say, “Good job, Mother–clearly you’re a genius at this parenting thing.”

Then came Clyde.

The first week of kindergarten was business as usual: As smiley face after smiley face dotted the page I began to congratulate myself once more for my obviously superb parenting skills. Maybe I should teach a class, I thought to myself. Or a series of classes. I know: A seminar. Then came the first yellow face, which was quickly followed by another–and another–until finally, I turned to Clyde and, in my most un-superb, non-seminar giving voice asked him:

“Do you know how many yellow faces Clementine got when she was in kindergarten? None! And here it is, only the second week of school, and already you…” I stopped myself in mid-harangue, suddenly overcome with visions of a 42 year-old Clyde huddled in the corner of his therapist’s couch, sobbing about how he could never, ever, compete with his “perfect” older sister. I needn’t have worried: The expression on Clyde’s face was not so much the chastened despair that I’d feared, but rather pure, unadulterated disinterest. It was as if I had just spent the last five minutes speaking in tongues. In fact, the look on his face clearly said: “What are you talking about? You’re comparing me to that one over there? The one who’d rather be good than have fun? Whatever.”

My fears of long-lasting psychological damage were further assuaged the next week, when after receiving yet another yellow face his teachers reported that his reaction had been a rather exasperated, “I told my parents it would be impossible for me to get all green faces.” He repeated this sentiment again when we got home, going on to add that, anyway, it wasn’t his fault that kindergarten was filled with all sorts of impossible rules like keeping your shoes on all the time, and never, ever slugging the fellow next to you–even when he calls you a dork.

Sensing that this was going to be harder than I had anticipated, I took the easy way out: I bribed him. From now on, I told him, four green smiley faces in one week would equal a pizza night at home, while five would equal a trip to Peter Piper Pizza. At first my only fear was that Clementine, AKA Lord High Supreme Judge of Fairness and Equal Portions (symbol of power: a golden caliper for measuring cake slices) would hear about the deal and complain bitterly (and justifiably) about how she “never got nothing” for all the green faces she got in kindergarten.

But then, as the green faces started to appear with more frequency, I started to worry that I’d actually have to pay up. Finally, after Clyde brought home his fourth green smiley face in a row, and the specter of Peter Piper Pizza loomed ominously before me, I hit upon the perfect solution. As he walked into his classroom that Friday I bent down and whispered into his ear: “I think that little boy over there just called you a dork.”

The first thing you need to know about me is that I love to argue: as far as I’m concerned, religion and politics are the building–not the stumbling–blocks of a lovely dinner conversation. Just ask my husband: I will happily debate anyone, anywhere, anytime (prior knowledge of the subject at hand being a helpful, but not entirely necessary, prerequisite). Given all of that, I was never one to be daunted by the prospect of arguing with my children as they got older: on the contrary, I was looking forward to it. I envisioned a house full of impassioned dinner table debates on subjects as diverse as capital punishment, legalizing marijuana, and school dress codes. Sure, every now and then I knew that there would be debates more along the lines of which contestant should be the next one booted off of Hell’s Kitchen, but for the most part I thought that the quality of the rhetoric would be witty, erudite, and urbane–sort of like my own private Oscar Wilde play. What I ended up with, though, couldn’t have been more different: not only have our daily “debates” failed to reach the levels of sophistication I was dreaming of, at some times they even fail to reach a level of comprehension. This is because, for the most part, my children’s arguments are completely dumb.
By “dumb” I don’t mean to imply that their arguments are naive, although that is often the case.

“Why can’t everything be free?” says Clementine as she flips through the same toy catalog she has just ripped from her little brother’s hands with a shriek of “That’s MINE!”.

And I don’t mean to imply that their arguments are nonsensical; although that, too, is often the case.

“It’s no fair that our brains get to tell us what to do,” says Clyde, seemingly considering his own gray matter to be some sort of parasitical overlord.

No, I mean that their arguments are just plain stupid.

“Put on a raincoat,” I’ll say as Clementine heads out the door into a Class V hurricane.

“It’s not raining,” she’ll respond.

“Yes, it is,” I’ll counter, as our neighbors wave to us from their kayak in the middle of the street.

“I don’t see any rain.”

At that point, it’s on: back and forth like some sort of Abbot and Costello routine, until I am completely frustrated both by the fact that not only have we spent the last twenty minutes arguing, but that we have spent the last twenty minutes arguing about something so patently stupid. Maybe I took too many philosophy classes as an undergraduate, but I was always under the impression that debate was supposed to be about the intangibles: what is the nature of love, who owns the concept of honor, do two wrongs ever make a right. I had no idea that sober people could actually get into an argument over whether or not water falling from the sky qualified as “rain”. It’s like living with a future President of the United States.

At this rate, the next thing she’ll be debating is what the meaning of “is” is, or worse yet, arguing that even though we have not yet found any tangible evidence of sunshine, this fact does not imply that the sun is not still shining in some hidden bunker even as we speak.

I never imagined that the day would come when I’d actually be looking forward to debating the merits of Hell’s Kitchen?

I have always been fascinated by the condition known as idiot savant, whereby a person can be highly skilled in one specific talent (like mathematics or painting), while remaining almost completely helpless when it comes to performing common, everyday tasks like getting dressed or pouring a bowl of cereal. How, I’ve always wondered, could a person with such obvious intelligence and/or motor skills not be able to perform the most basic chores of daily existence? How could the same person who is capable of calculating upper level algebraic equations in their head not be able to tell time on a digital clock? And then, as with so many things in my life, this, mystery, too was finally solved–once I had children.

Not that I can now claim to understand the “savant” part of the equation any better: it’s not like my children are writing theorems in their spare time. (In fact, the introduction of double digit multiplication into Clementine’s fourth grade classroom recently led her to announce, upon arriving back home, “Well, that’s it: I’m doomed.” It was refreshing to see that instead of waiting for life to beat her down, she has instead taken a proactive approach and given up on life early). No, unfortunately, my children’s role in providing me with newfound understanding of this condition has been more “idiot” than “savant.”

The fact is, that while my children are normally quite dexterous and clever, they also have a knack for being completely undone by tasks as simple as opening dresser drawers, putting on shoes, and placing socks in the dirty clothes hamper. Fortunately, I can take comfort in knowing that in this they are not alone: judging by what I have seen and heard in other families, this seeming reversal of skills–where a previously competent child reverts to a semi-vegetative state upon being asked to perform household chores–is a common enough malady that it has earned a name of its own: idiot enfant.

The odd thing is that, although very common, idiot enfant appears to hardly ever have been studied. (A quick search of leading medical journals will turn up nothing under this name, I can assure you). Perhaps this is because of the affliction’s transient nature: it has a tendency to disappear at seemingly random times. For example: the case of a child who, while in the throes of an idiot enfant episode, suddenly “forgets” how to put on their shoes when they are told it is now time to go to the dentist; strangely enough, an immediate remission may be brought about by something as simple as changing the word “dentist” to “candy store”.

Or there’s the case of the child who, despite have spent the previous week very competently negotiating shuttles, airports and attending an out of state camp all on her own, upon returning home can’t seem to remember how to use the front door, and stands there kicking it in helpless rage. (This is also the same child who will later storm off to bed insisting, “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get a job and live on my own”, and yet will not, in the grumpiness of the following morning, be able to pour her own cereal into a bowl.)

My only hope is that someday this heart-breaking condition will get the attention it deserves, and children all over the world will no longer have to face the humiliation of telling their mothers that the cereal bowl they were asked to rinse out must remain dirty because they have “forgotten how to turn on the water.” As far as I’m concerned, this couldn’t happen soon enough: it appears that the condition may be catching: how else could you explain a man who has spent at least ten years of his adult life as a bachelor suddenly “forgetting” that colors and whites get washed separately?

When I asked my 5-year-old son, Clyde, how his day at kindergarten had gone, I didn’t expect to get a full blow by blow account–complete with sound effects–but that is exactly what I got. This meant that, when he got to the part about somehow landing “wrong” on a piece of playground equipment, he recreated the scene by staggering around the kitchen, clutching his relevant parts and shouting: “Oh my nuts! Oh my balls! Oh my nuts and balls!”

And yet again I was reminded that boys and girls are different. When Clementine was Clyde’s age I was always very determined that she learn the correct words for all her body parts. She did not have a “coochi”, a “hoo-ha” or even a “down there”–she had a vagina. Also, she would not one day be growing a baby in her “tummy” (not unless she was involved in some bizarre cross-gender/cross-species relationship with a seahorse); she would be growing one in her uterus. And those things up top? Not “chi-chis” or “num-nums” but breasts and nipples.

With Clyde, however, it’s a whole different story. Although in the beginning I tried using the word “penis” in our bath time discussions, it wasn’t long before I had to give it up: immediately upon saying the “p” word Monty Python’s “Penis Song” begins to play in a continuous loop in my brain, one that takes me days to fully remove. And so “pecker” was born.

As for “nuts” and “balls”, I’m not ready to take the blame for that one (until recently I never found the need to discuss those particular parts with Clyde at all, let alone name them), but I’ll admit that if I had been the one to introduce the subject, those would likely have been the words I would have chosen. What can I say? Even though Monty Python has no songs celebrating “testicles” or “scrotum” (that I know of), I seriously doubt I could ever be induced to say those words to Clyde (or anyone else) while keeping a straight face.

Why is it that when it comes to male genitalia, the proper name is the one that makes you giggle, while the slang word is the one that sounds correct? This makes it almost impossible for me to have a serious discussion with Clyde about his body parts; with Clementine it was so much easier: the slang names for female genitalia sound either so patronizing or so insulting that you don’t want to use them. With boy parts, however, using any words other than slang just makes you sound fruity.

This would explain why it took me so long, then, to recognize the basic problem with Clyde’s lament of “Oh my nuts and balls”: at first it just sounded like a slangier version of what I’ve heard all my life, sort of like the “Cheese and Rice!” a Baptist says when he hits his thumb with a hammer. I didn’t fully realize that it signaled a real misunderstanding of his own anatomy until it became the subject of yet another bath time discussion, one where I tried to explain that it was either ‘nuts’ or ‘balls’–he had to pick one. “But there’s two,” he replied, perplexed. When I told him it didn’t matter–he could only call them one thing at a time, the ensuing “Why?” was just as confused. After a long pause I had to admit that I had no idea.

Whoever said that male anatomy is easier to understand because it’s all out in the open obviously never had to deal with a very logical (and wet) 5-year-old. Again: I never had this problem with Clementine–and probably never will; with any luck, by the time she’s old enough to want to know the difference between a cervix and a uterus she’ll be too embarrassed to ask her mother.

I am always struck by how often, when we tell stories about our “crazy” parents, they revolve around food. My own personal crazy story involves the time I was three and tried to pretend that I’d finished my dinner while my Mom was out of the room. On the one hand, it was precociously clever of me to leap into action and scrape my plate into the trash can in the two minutes it took her to answer the phone and return; on the other, it was appallingly stupid of me to think that anyone would believe I’d finished a full plate of food in so short a time, especially since part of my dinner had been a piece of chicken still on the (now missing) bone. It wasn’t long before the tell-tale drumstick was back in front of me, this time much the worse for wear: it seems that was the day when all of the ashtrays and hairbrushes in the entire house (to my three-year-old eyes, the entire world) had been cleaned. Needless to say, it was a meal that I did not soon forget; and a trick that I did not ever try again.

The stories I hear from other people all seem to play on the same theme: whether it’s the one about the uneaten food item making a surprise guest appearance at every meal until it is finally consumed, or the one about an entire meal being peremptorily withdrawn (and replaced with a big ol’ bowl of nothing) after a complaint had been lodged against it, all of the best stories of parents behaving madly seem to involve food.

I was reminded of this quite forcefully the other day as I stared at the unhappy faces in front of me eating pizza at a sleepover at my house. Now, normally, pizza and sleepover do not combine to equal unhappy, but on this occasion–when the pizza in question had been thrown around the yard as a not-so-damn-funny (at least to the person who had paid for the pizza)“joke” and was now covered in gravel and wood chips–unhappy was definitely the mot juste. There were some threats of imminent puking, and a near swoon or two, but I’m guessing that it will be a long time until any of those children confuse food with projectiles while spending the night at my house.

Sometimes I think that we as parents forget to play the crazy card–the one where we go completely off message, say “screw the time out”, and hand down a punishment worthy of Solomon. This is when you do something so completely over the top–like madly tossing every toy in sight into a big garbage bag–that you trump absolutely everything else that is occurring at the moment: temper tantrums, sibling rivalry, whining at a pitch only dogs can hear. There is nothing else quite like it in our arsenal. It is the moment when your children finally realize that yes, you can be driven over the edge, that for all they know there might be seven or eight of their older, unknown siblings– the ones who didn’t straighten up and fly right–buried in the back yard at this very moment, and by God they better watch their step around this woman, because she is absolutely, freakin’, nuts.

Crazy works. Just like having to eat that hairy, ashy chicken leg worked on me, and hopefully eating the extra piquant pizza worked on the kids at Clementine’s sleepover. Some would argue that I shouldn’t have taken it to the crazy level; that I should’ve started out smaller, like taking away their permission to play Game Cube for the night. Somehow though, I doubt that when they think back on that night any of them would ever remember the time they threw pizza at a sleepover, and the Mom got so mad she “took away their right to play Sonic for a day”.

For some people, tracing their family’s roots means a nostalgic visit to the “old country”, complete with a donkey cart ride down a rustically rutted byway to a quaint little village by the sea where boisterous young men will serenade them with incomprehensible folk songs while wrinkled old women ply them with homemade plum brandy and freshly baked pastries. For my little family, however, tracing our family’s roots is a whole lot simpler: a trip to the local Circle K will suffice. This is because, despite all of my romantic wishes to the contrary, our ancestors are white trash.

I’d like to blame my husband’s family for this: after all, the branches of his family tree are filled with enough names like “Bubba” and “Uncle Skinny” to populate an entire Jeff Foxworthy Christmas special. Not only that, but some of their actions could qualify for the punch line in one of Foxworthy’s joke: “Have you ever lost more than one finger while working at the pickle relish plant? You may be a redneck.”

Unfortunately, however, my family’s tree grows just as close to the trailer park as his does: our personal entry into the Foxworthy lineup would be something along the lines of: “Has anyone in your family ever chopped off the head of their spouse with an axe–and gotten away with it? They may be a redneck (and a scary, Deliverance-style one at that).” (In my relative’s defense, he did claim that he was only trying to chop down his wife’s door to warn her that their boat was on fire; how was he supposed to know she would choose that most inopportune of moments to put her ear to the door to try and figure out “what all of the ruckus was about”?)

With family like that, you could almost argue that when Clementine and I went tubing down the Salt River this past July we were not only engaging in mindless hedonism; we were exploring our heritage. And evidence of our “heritage” was never far from hand: despite the fact that the people we were surrounded with represented a wide range of ethnicities it soon became obvious that–no matter what their color– every single one of them clearly qualified as “white trash”. There were the ones falling off of their tubes without spilling so much as a drop of MGD; the ones jumping off of cliffs heads first into dark waters of uncertain depths; the ones performing impromptu strip teases on the tops of a 64 quart coolers; and, of course, the ones vomiting copiously down the sides of their own and others’ inner tubes. All were different, and yet all were disturbingly (and familiarly) the same. It was a little like getting a suntan and diversity training all at once: no matter what color, race, or creed someone was, when it came time to vomit, they all looked the same.

It was so much like a white trash family reunion, in fact, that at the end of the day, as we watched a man dragging his nearly comatose girlfriend (butt still planted firmly in the middle of her tube) up the rocky hill to the shuttle bus, I was inspired to turn to Clementine, spread my arms wide and say: “Look around you: these are your people.”

True, there weren’t any donkey carts; but there were plenty of jackasses. And while the boisterous young mens’ songs weren’t nearly as incomprehensible as I would have liked, and the wrinkled old women were actually middle-aged biker chicks who had unfortunately misspent their youth applying Bain du Soleil where SPF 45 would have served them better, I knew in my heart of hearts that Clementine and I would never come any closer than this to returning to the “auld sod”. Maybe next time I’ll get her a commemorative Big Gulp to celebrate.

Because no sports team can survive without its loyal cadre of superstitious fans, during this past summer’s World Cup I decided that it was imperative for me to watch all of France’s World Cup matches at downtown’s Pay’n’Take; if I didn’t, they would lose. (Oh yeah, and I also had to drink at least three beers). Thanks, no doubt, to these very difficult sacrifices on my part, France won. Mostly. Right up until the very end.

I am a latecomer to the world of soccer fandom: in fact, it wasn’t until the finals, when a man sitting next to me patiently explained it, that I finally began to get a grip on the offsides rule (and a tenuous one at that–even now it’s starting to fade–wait a minute–there it goes). And furthermore, I’ll admit that my support of France was based more on their team captain, Zinedine Zidane, than it was on any understanding of their past performances. (I wanted to show my support of a fellow geriatric: the 34 year old player was described as “old” so often I half expected him to come out on the pitch pushing a walker.)

So what caused my sudden interest in the game? Simple: after watching my own kids play soccer for several years now, I finally felt an urge to just once see how the game is meant to be played.

It was quite an eye-opener: as someone who has heretofore only seen soccer games played by the preschool set, it was quite a surprise for me to find out that, in a real game, play does not stop because a butterfly crosses the field–even a big, pretty, yellow one. I was also surprised to discover that individual players do not stop in the middle of a drive to pick their nose, contemplate a really neat cloud formation, or yell at their sister for playing with their Power Rangers. They also do not lie down on the field or sidelines and refuse to move another inch until they are told who brought snack, what snack is, and whether or not there will be enough snack for everyone. Furthermore, I did not see even one mother standing on the sidelines holding a box of Dora the Explorer fruit chews and a case of juice boxes; nor did I see any mothers running out onto the field to adjust shin guards, tie shoe laces, and (heaven forbid), realign athletic cups.

The whole thing was so impressive, in fact, that I decided it would be a good idea to take my son, Clyde, with me to watch the final between France and Italy–maybe, I thought, he could pick up a few pointers, even if they turned out to be something as simple as: “chase the ball, not the butterfly”. Really though, what I mostly wanted him to see was how hard and how fast the players ran (even without the threat of “no snack”), and how their coach never once had to tell them to get off of the swing set and back onto the field.

And so it was that Clyde came with me to the Pay’n’Take to learn the fine art of futbal. Or at least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, much like my original plan–where only my steady beer consumption could assure France of victory–this plan too went awry.

Perhaps not uncoincidentally, both plans were thwarted by the same thing: the head butt felt ‘round the world. As Zidane was ushered out of the stadium I realized that not only had France lost, but, judging by the look of astonishment and delight on Clyde’s face, Clyde had also picked up more than a few “simple” pointers. In fact, I had the sinking realization that chasing butterflies during the game would soon seem like an idyllic memory–and that Micro Soccer might never be the same again.

I am a firm believer in hand-me-downs; if it were possible, I myself would dress in nothing but cast-offs, thereby eliminating the need for me ever to enter a fluorescently lit dressing room again. Unfortunately, however, most of the people I know have either stopped growing (taller), or are, like me, essentially cheapskates, and will wear their clothing down to the last threads. My children, though, are much luckier in this regard: they are on the receiving end of so many different hand-me-down chains, and receive so many new outfits each month, that frequently I have trouble recognizing them in a crowd. (Or maybe they’re just hiding from me).

Clementine, at nine, is old enough to exercise some discretion in her acceptance of the hand-me-down largesse: she will sort through a newly arrived pile and manage to fling aside anything reeking of pinkness or ruffles quicker than you can say “Laura Ashley.” Clyde, on the other hand, at five, is not so lucky: he has only my (somewhat dormant) powers of discrimination to protect him from sartorial suffering, and oftentimes this is not enough. To me, if the shoe (pants, belt, hat, shirt, pajamas) fits, then wear it: style, color, and whether or not the Disney character on the front is from this decade or the last is immaterial. This, then, would explain how Clyde came to be practically in tears the last time we went swimming in Oak Creek: I had packed him a Speedo.

“But I want a boy swimming suit,” he said, staring aghast at the shiny blue banana hammock I had pulled out of our bag for him.

Knowing that any sign of sympathy would be seen as weakness on my part, and also knowing that displaying that weakness would inevitably put me on the slippery slope to driving him back home for another suit, I took the hard line approach and said, “Well, this is it. It’s either this or naked.” He eyed the various crawdads, minnows and water bugs circling the swimming hole (all of them clearly just waiting to try out Clyde’s wrinkled little pink “lure”), decided that discretion was much the better part of fashion, and wisely opted for the suit, soon forgetting about the horror of it all in the joy of yet another summer’s day spent falling into Oak Creek. I, however, had a much harder time getting over it.

There was just something sad about my little boy getting old enough to know the difference between “girl” suits and “boy suits” (or at least “European” and “American”). I could already see that the day was coming soon when he would no longer let his sister dress him up as a ballerina, or come home all prettied up after a hard afternoon playing “princess” with the little girl down the street. And my hopes for one member of our family to finally start shaving their legs? Dashed.

My husband, of course, did not take nearly so dim a view as I did. Although he was appalled that I had let Clyde walk around Oak Creek in a Speedo (“People will think we’re German!”), he was proud of his boy for putting up some resistance. In fact, I hadn’t seen him that choked up since last Halloween when Clyde decided he wasn’t going to be Dora the Explorer after all; he was going to be Spiderman.

Still, it’s not as if I’ve lost all hope of having a cross-dresser in the family: based on his proclivity to join any party, any time; his ability to regard most injuries (his own and others’) as marks of honor; and his love for all things wet, I’m thinking there’s got to be a career as a Grand Canyon boatman somewhere in his future.

I can’t wait until my husband sees him in his first wraparound skirt.