i’m not cut out for playdates
Posted on April 3, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark | 10 Comments
I wish I believed that all children are lovely and special in their own way but, truth be told, I have a hard time adoring almost ALL children that aren’t my own (and there are times I don’t like my own very much either). But most days I can put my best foot forward and feign affection and concern for the few hours required to pull off a successful play date. Thankfully most play dates are over in a 180 minutes or less, but who’s counting. And usually I can find something nice to say about each get together, something along the lines of, “I like how you guys rolled each other in glue and then applied the glitter, that was a very avant-garde interpretation of ‘why don’t you go color’.”
My son has a classmate that we have been trying to invite to our home for the better part of six months and whose mother has never shown her face at a school function and apparently doesn’t return phone calls about suggested play dates. Believe me, I have tried and tried because my O has had little luck connecting with the boys in his grade since we moved here and we are dying to encourage any friendship that he’s hopeful about. But I had finally written off the prospect of connecting with this family outside of school until I met the Mom at this past weekend’s fund raising event. She seemed fine in a I-don’t-return-phone-calls, make-eye-contact or wash-my-hair-very-often kind of way. So I broached the subject of having her Jack over on Sunday and she was willing to part with her dear boy for an afternoon. As Jack’s scheduled arrival approached on Sunday, my phone began to ring because Jack’s Mom was at the Home Depot and was going to be a little late dropping him off. “Fine, no problem and, by the way, my name’s not Christy.” Then the phone rang a few minutes later because she had forgotten to bring our address with her to the Home Depot and couldn’t recall where we lived. “Main Street, can’t miss it, and my name’s still not Christy.”
When Jack finally arrived, his mother practically tossed him onto the front lawn and peeled out, vowing to pick him up before dark. First the boys took off to the zip line and began hurling themselves between trees while holding onto the pulley by their knees. Upside down, shoes off, gleeful and giddy, until Jack fell on his head and developed a lump and they ran inside to show me the contusion while tracking a yard full of mud across the kitchen floor. But before I could inspect the wound, Jack veered toward the fridge, announcing he hadn’t had lunch. It was 3:00 p.m. but he claimed his mother hadn’t fed him and, considering the hair and phone calls and her penchant for calling me Christy, I kind of believed him. I offered him a bologna sandwich and he said he’d prefer turkey. Since we didn’t have turkey I offered bologna again. He must not have believed my comment about the turkey as he marched over to my fridge and yanked the door open to have a look. He didn’t like what he found and demanded to see the pantry where there might be a can of soup he could stomach. I made him a bologna sandwich and threw it on the counter declaring, “Take it or leave it.” When he finished scarfing down the lunchmeat he decided to ask for cookies, which I gave out happily, having planned on the cookies but not the sandwich. After Jack had eaten his fill, the boys took off upstairs where Jack proceeded to show O how to long-on to some web site that featured games of the explosive ’shoot at tanks and down helicopters’ variety. O was transfixed, smitten with the shock and awe of it. He’d never been allowed to see such violence but I let them be, fearing interruption might make provoke Jack’s insatiable hunger.
Less than twenty minutes later Jack was down in the kitchen again declaring he was bored. I tried to ignore him while I mopped up the mud on the floor but he’s a persistent little nit. So eventually I was forced to ask, “What is it you’d like to do, Jack?” And he replied that he would like to play the Wii because the Wii’s cool and this other video game they’d been playing on the computer was graphically unsatisfactory.
I filled Jack in on my feelings about the Wii and explained that I thought he and O could be playing outdoors on such a glorious afternoon, pointing to the bats and balls and bikes that littered the yard. They eventually went out there, dejected by my refusal to allow them to while away the afternoon in front of a video game. There were a few attempts to recapture the upside down drama of the zip line and then there was a switch to football that lasted minutes and then it was chase the dog with a bat until she bit Jack in forearm. Then there were compresses and bloody rags and screaming while Hydrogen Peroxide was applied and Neosporin administered. I was struggling, really struggling not to call Jack’s Mom and beg her to come pick up her impossible son. I just kept thinking, “Did I tell her to pick him up at 4:30 or 5? Because those thirty minutes could prove to be excruciating.”
She finally arrived at 5:30 just as I’d finished mopping up the mud in the kitchen for the second time. I marched Jack out to meet her, made nice chit chat about the wonderful time the boys had blowing each other up and torturing the dog, apologizing for the bite and the bandages and the sting of the antiseptic. And just when I thought I’d be rid of them, she asked, can my older son use your bathroom? “Sure, sure,” I said wincing as I watched him walk across the clean kitchen floor, his muddy sneakers leaving a trail. When they pulled out of the driveway I could hear Jack saying, “Mom, I’m starving can we stop at McDonald’s?”
I’m still struggling to come up with anything positive to say about that play date. So far I’ve mustered, “Doesn’t that Jack have great hair?” and “That kid’s got a way with the bologna!”
Photo courtesy of purebound.com
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