Thursday, November 15, 2007

Dirty vs Clean

I can't sleep so I'll write another quick post about an incident that happened today. I've been a bit stressed, as you know. I don't blow up very often but when I do, it's not very pretty. And no, I didn't loose it on any member of my family. Who was the recipient of my anger? My next door neighbor.

Let me give you some background. I've written about her very clean boy. My very dirty boy gets him in trouble sometimes. Boys do get in trouble at times. They like to pick on the girls. They sometimes wipe their dirty hands on clean towels. They sometimes bring things from home that they shouldn't, like a blue glitter glue stick. This blue glue might have gotten on your son's hands and on your backyard fort. And it was my dirty boy's idea. I understand this. My son is not perfect, far from it. But he's a good kid and I love him, a lot.

Now that you have the background of our boys, let me go on. For the last maybe two weeks, I see my neighbor, pulling her very clean son aside and whispering to him whenever the dirty boy comes around. At first, I didn't think much of it until I overheard her the other day. Dirty boy was whispering to clean boy. I heard what he said. "Let's go to the fort." Not a bad thing, not a malicious thing, not a dirty thing. My neighbor, who didn't hear dirty boy, proceeds to yell at her son. "Don't listen to him!"
I immediately took dirty boy by the hand and left. It struck a nerve in me. I left without saying anything to her. I was mad but didn't want to regret anything I said.

Fast forward to this afternoon. I was getting the kids out of the car after work. I had rushed home to make sure to be there before Gab's bus came. The neighbor kids were out so dirty boy was excited. I walk over with him and I immediately see my neighbor call her son over to her to whisper something to him. At this point, I'm boiling inside. I tried to control my anger but it was too much. So what did I say? And I'll quote so you can see how eloquent I am.
"I am so sick and tired of your crap."
She immediately got very defensive and yelled that she wasn't talking to her precious son about my dirty boy. That showed me her guilt.
So I took my dirty boy, and left. She called after me. I ignored her. My boy cried. I assured him it was nothing he did wrong. He wasn't in trouble.

Do I feel bad? Yes, I let it seethe too long. I should have told her that it bothered me right away. I will go over and tell her this tomorrow. I'm not going to try and explain why I'm angry. She knows.
I love my dirty boy, blue glitter hands and all.

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