So the other evening, I'm being a dutiful husband and putting away my laundry (as if!) and my beloved asks if she can come in along with Kellie to talk to me about something. What follows was the beginning of a very interesting couple of days.
It went something like this......
It seems that Kellie is friends with a boy--who for the purpose of our story we'll call "Mark" (not his real name--naturally) who is black. Now Mark knows this other kid, who we'll call "Greg" who is white and the two of them used to be friends. I was waiting for the old racial thing to be thrown at me.....but I was wrong. It was even weirder than that. According to the story I got (rather the first version of the story I got).....Greg, who is in 8th grade, has come out of the closet as gay. Now, I was told this and sort of freaked, because when I was in school, if there was even an inkling that someone was gay....it was tough times for that person, so they would certainly keep it to themselves and not announce it to the rest of the school. But, I'm thinking that maybe times have changed. Getting back to the story, apparently Greg has a crush on Mark and has made no secret of his desire for him. Again, keep in mind that we're talking 8th graders here.....which is a little twisted, huh? Anyway, Mark--Kellie's friend--is not interested in reciprocating Greg's interest and has told him so....apparently Greg is not taking no for an answer, to the degree that poor Mark had to get a RESTRAINING ORDER filed against Greg. Again, 8th graders.
So, the other day, Kellie is walking with Mark when he is approached by Greg, who apparently makes what Kellie says is a rather inappropriate attempt to grab at Mark's....um.....ass. Now Kellie is a witness to this, and is told later in the day by Mark that the police ended up showing up on campus and that Greg may have been arrested and taken down to juvenile hall. Now, my first reaction as a parent is that this seems like pretty serious shit. I told Kim that I wondered why in the hell a kid with a restraining order would be allowed back on school grounds when his victim could potentially come across him at any time during the day. Sounded a bit odd and I asked Kim to call the assistant principal to get the scoop on what was what.
So interestingly, the assistant principal knew nothing about the whole story. She promised to look into it and get back to Kim. A few hours later, Kim calls me at work with the update. Apparently the assistant principal had pulled Greg into her office for a little discussion. Greg not only denied being gay, but claimed that Mark had being calling him names insuiating that he was. There was no restraining order, the police had been on campus....but for something altogether different (involving a student who was caught in the middle of a custody dispute I believe). Kim was told that the assistant principal couldn't talk about it with Marc because he was absent that day (hmmm) but that she would get to his side of the story the next day.
So when I get home Kim pulls me aside and tells me that Kellie is pretty mortified that she had called the school. I called Kellie out to the living room for a little father-daughter chat, explaining to her that the reason the school was called was not because of whatever problem that Marc & Greg were having, but because she was now seen as being involved in it. I didn't want her ending up getting either hurt or in trouble because of it and wouldn't apologizing for having her mom do what we thought was best for her (am I like Ward Cleaver or what?). I also told her about the new details that were emerging (no homosexuality, no restraining order, no police) and told her that it appeared that someone was running a little fast and loose with the truth here (i.e. Marc). I asked her how she knew that Greg was gay. She replied....."because Marc told me". Oooh. Well, you couldn't get a better source than that. The one kid's sworn enemy is certainly the person that you want to go to for any deeply private information about someone's sexuality. Ahem.
So anyway, the next day comes (Friday) and Marc shows up to school and is confronted by the assistant principal, who never called us back. According to Kellie though, Marc was sticking by his story. We reminded her that at least three things he had said were the truth had been proven to be lies so she needed to take what he said with a grain of salt. Kim told me later that Kellie was a little worried that Marc and his circle of friends wouldn't like her anymore. We stopped out to eat and I thought about what I could say to her....Kim went up to pay the bill and I asked Andy to follow his mom while Kellie and I had a little talk.
"So I hear that your a little worried about Marc & his friends not liking you."
"Well," she said, "he's not mad at me. But some of his friends are."
"Well if he's not mad at you...why do you care what they think?"
"Well I want them to like me."
"Can I ask you something? These kids....Marc's friends....are they all in 8th grade?"
"Yes."
"Well then....let me tell you what I think is going on here. I think that thru your friendship with Marc, your sort of hanging with a new circle of friends. For various reasons, some of your friends that you had last year aren't so tight with you this year.
And you start hanging with these 8th graders....and you start thinking that its kind of cool that these older kids are liking you. Right so far?"
"Maybe."
"And I think that maybe that one year age difference, although it doesn't seem like a lot....might be a little bigger than you realize. One year is a big difference when your 13, 14 or 15. And you've been kind of 'riding in the fast lane' a little bit. And you know what? If none of those kids ends up liking you, it wouldn't bother me in the least. If you ended up losing one of the friends that you've had for all the years that you've been there....that would bother me. But if these kids are only liking you because of Marc....then they really weren't your friends anyway."
We got up and started to walk over to her mom & brother. I gave her a gentle tug on the hair and pulled her close to me.
"But ya know what?" I whispered into her ear. "I love you anyway."
And high school is still a year away.
Later,
Jeff
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment