Commentary : Early Preview of Life’s Harsher Side : Extortion caper: A mother suddenly realizes how defenseless her child is against the tentacles of a world she wishes could be different.

From the police officer’s viewpoint, the incident must have been nothing more than a boring misadventure. For my son, it became a powerful lesson that life is not always as fair as he is. For me it was the sharp realization that parenting is a pain in the heart.

It started with a phone call to my work. As an elementary school teacher in Chula Vista, it is not often that I receive a call compelling enough to be summoned from my classroom. But the principal arrived, informing me that the police were on the phone, and that he would watch my class.

As I ran to the office, my heart pounded in my head, displacing the confusion that was trying to anticipate the news. Had something happened to my husband, who was driving home that day from out-of-town business? Maybe my home had been burglarized, a constant worry with those of us worker bees who vacate our homes daily for all to observe. The surprise was that the police officer was calling from my son’s junior high school.

Apparently, two weeks earlier, Eli had become an unwitting victim of a sophomoric extortion caper. He had been approached in the hallway by a much larger boy who had admired his watch, indicating that he wanted to wear it. Intimidated and lacking the buttress of friends, Eli had relinquished his watch.

By Friday, Eli had found the courage to request his watch back from the boy. The good news was that the boy had returned it. The bad news was that he demanded it back on Monday.

Eli again gave up his watch, waiting until Friday to ask for its return. This time the boy had a stipulation. The watch was gone, but for $10 he might be able to find it.

Without seeking advice, Eli paid the boy from his allowance, fully believing that his watch would be returned. When it wasn’t, he gingerly began wearing a second watch.

It should not have surprised Eli when the boy again confronted him, but evidently it did. The boy demanded the watch, and Eli turned it over.

I don’t know how long this would have continued, except that Eli by now had run out of watches. Luckily the incident came to the attention of the principal and, finally, the police, when Eli and his friends realized that the watches were being worn by other students, who had bought them.

At a time when schools are being terrorized by violence and drugs, Eli’s watch adventure hardly warrants more than a stifled yawn. It is a pedestrian story with a happy ending in that the perpetrator was suspended, and the victim recovered his watches, his money and most of his pride.

But the larger impact is for me, the parent who suddenly realizes how defenseless her child is against the tentacles of a world I wish could be different. I had shellacked and polished Eli with a veneer of good faith. What took years to make shiny would now have to scuff.

It hurts to see the innocence inevitably slip from your child. It is a pain of parenthood I didn’t expect.

As I drove home from work that day, I wondered just exactly what I would say to Eli. My heart was heavy with the knowledge that he had been burdened for so long with a problem he had not shared, indicative of those tottering on the threshold of adulthood. Our roles are now changing as he takes custody of his life, but neither one of us is yet playing the part well.

I thought about his strong sense of justice as I struggled with the unfairness of being fair. I felt thwarted by the “Sesame Street” values I had instilled in my son, realizing too late they could not survive without a bond of distrust. I shuddered to think that the moral would now be that the world is not ordered by the tenderness of youth.

The watch affair had been simply a preview of the harsher side of growing up, for both of us.

We cried and we hugged as we talked about life. He shared his fear that, if he had said no to the boy, he might have been beaten up. I longed to reassure him with motherly promises that such injustices would not happen, but I didn’t. Instead, I affirmed the possibility for harm in the future, and a part of me died.

I told Eli that a quality that distinguishes adults from children is that adults are better at pretending to be unafraid. I compared it to the Wizard of Oz, and how the wizard had convinced the people in Emerald City of his courage by using a loud voice, a big head and some smoke. It wasn’t until the curtain was pulled back that he was revealed for the timid little man that he really was. Sometimes it’s necessary, I said, to be puffy on the outside, even though you are scared to death on the inside.

What I didn’t mention was, as a puffy parent in these uncertain times, I am scared to death.

It is not likely that we will get through the next few years unscathed, nor would we be better for it even if we did. The watch has become our warning to fasten our seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy life. Bumpy for Eli, who must bounce over the rocks. Bumpy for me, who must somehow let it happen.

One thing I do know though. Behind the heart of a strong child must lie the joyful but bruised heart of a parent.