Wasn’t Hitting Boys How Thelma and Louise Got Started?
She calls me at the office, dispensing with a greeting.
“Mom,” she says in that hesitant tone, pausing just enough to let me assume that what follows will be something I would rather not hear.
“I’m on orange,” she says. Then she exhales.
This throws me a bit. I weigh the possibilities. Yes, probably something about school. The parameters seem within reach. Then it clicks.
“No, you mean you’re on yellow,” I say, thinking OK, so my kid is almost a saint.
As I recall, being on yellow in the first grade means that you have done something mildly wrong. But I have no idea what that something might be.
Especially in relation to my child.
Truth is, yellow has never been mentioned in detail around our house. The last thing I remember about this color business was that my daughter had reported, with her usual fanfare, that she was on green. My husband and I had clucked our approval. Why, of course .
“No, orange,” my daughter is saying now.
I am forced to press on. Yellow is just a warm-up, I learn. It’s maybe a little dangerous, but nothing to get you thrown in jail.
Orange is something else. It is beyond yellow and but a tiny step from red, which I don’t even want to think about just yet.
All I can say is, it’s a good thing I went through those natural childbirth classes way back when. I know about breathing and willing one’s self to calm down.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I don’t remember,” my daughter says.
I wait. I exhale, loudly, into the phone. Still nothing.
“Well, I bet your teacher will remember at Back to School Night,” I say, not quite suppressing the edge in my tone.
“I hit Fred,” she says.
In-and-out. Inhalation. Exhalation. Deep breaths. . . . Yes, I am feeling a little better now.
Well, let me say this about Fred. I know him. I like him. He was at the bus stop last year. I know his mother. I like her, too. But, you know, one makes assumptions. Fred is a boy.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“He made me very angry,” my daughter says, suddenly prim. She knows that good grammar is a way to my soft side when all other routes seem blocked. And she throws in a bit of indignation to season the mix.
“What did he say ?” I ask.
“He said I was mean.”
“Well, you were mean. You hit him.”
We go back and forth, this 6-year-old and I, her logic against mine. I have a slight advantage at the moment, seeing as how I am her mom. But I am wondering what my firstborn will be like when she reaches, say, junior high.
And all the while, there is this word haunting me. It is orange .
So I ring up this child’s father right away to share the news. It’s a risk, this co-parenting. But I believe the man has a right to know, even if he does have a tendency to get a little worked up.
“Now, don’t overreact,” I say. “But your daughter’s on orange.”
Then I tell him about Fred.
The man is, momentarily, stunned. The thought of his daughter as troublemaker does not sit well. Yet I hear an echo of pride.
“Well, I told her that if boys give her a hard time, she should hit them back. Stand up for herself,” he says.
Give a man a daughter without first indoctrinating him in all the feminist principals and, invariably, something goes awry. Think of “Thelma and Louise: The Early Years.”
My husband and I go to Back to School Night that evening, directly after work. We get the word from the teacher on our daughter’s dirty deed.
Only in the teacher’s version, there is no mention of cause and effect. Fred said the assault was unprovoked. And even if it wasn’t. . . .
My husband and I nod gravely. We are concerned.
Then the teacher shows us the chair where our daughter sat, in tears, for five minutes of “timeout” in front of the class. This is the orange experience up close.
So my husband and I walk back to take our seats--sobered, to say the least. Another parent greets us and asks how our daughter has been.
“She hit Fred,” I volunteer.
“Oh, well, you know boys,” this mother says.
Exactly! But this woman has it all wrong. This is 1992. And about Thelma and Louise: I’m sure their parents tried their best.