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A few days ago I posted this on Twitter:

Saw a young kid angrily flailing and hitting a teacher when I picked up Riley today. Jeeeeeesus.

I wrote that because I’d just returned home and was still thinking about what I’d seen. I’d been bothered by it, quite a bit. I didn’t mean my comment to convey any kind of judgment but in retrospect I can see how it might have come across that way—so much is left unsaid, right? Like, did I mean “Jeeeeesus, what an asshole?” I did not, but I suppose it isn’t even remotely clear.

At any rate, someone emailed me about my tweet. She wrote that she hoped the kid was okay, that the teacher understood, and that the community tries to understand. She mentioned that while she wasn’t sure how I’d meant it, she thought I should see a blog post in which a parent detailed a struggle with her special needs child, one where he had a helpless reaction towards some other children that included hitting. She included one of the lines from the original post, which read:

“I expected to see everyone gawking, looks of shock mixed with pity and a dash of “don’t get near that kid, freak-out might be contagious” tossed in there for good measure.”

I read the post she linked (I asked Mir’s permission to link it from here as well), and it about broke my heart. It was so beautifully written, so vivid. I was glad to read on and see that the incident had happened in an supportive environment:

“Instead I saw… a few glances of concern. Kids who’d turned back to whatever they’d been doing before. A couple of understanding, encouraging looks in my direction. The main teacher walking over, asking (my son) if it was okay if she sat down, too. The parents of the other boys involved speaking quietly with them about what had happened.”

Still, my first reaction to receiving the email was one of confusion. Maybe defensiveness. I thought back on what I’d observed outside of Riley’s school and couldn’t see how I was supposed to understand it. I’d seen a teacher leading a young boy—her hand was on the top of his backpack, which he was wearing—towards the area where parents meet their kids, while the boy thrashed and furiously swung his arms at her. His grandmother had approached, looking completely helpless, and he screamed something at the teacher that caused her to say “I won’t let you speak to me that way.” The teacher then told the boy that she hoped he had a good weekend, and she walked away with the rest of the class while he stood there fuming, still yelling, still red-faced and out of control.

I couldn’t understand it because I didn’t know what was going on, I had no idea why the kid was acting out in that way, all I knew is that it looked intense and awful and a little scary. My reaction was pretty close to what Mir describes as being something she was worried about seeing on that day with her own son: I was absolutely shocked, for sure, and I felt miserable for everyone: the teacher, the boy, his family. I wasn’t worried that his freakout might be contagious, exactly, but in all honesty I wanted that kid to be gone—or at least greatly calmed down—before Riley came out of the school.

If what I saw from that unhappy boy isn’t uncommon—if striking out with words and violence is a reaction he occasionally cannot control—well, what then? How do parents and fellow students learn how to handle that in the right way? Because I don’t know how to see something like that and not find myself staring, not feel shocked. I don’t know how to not be worried about the safety of my own kid.

I have no idea if that boy was just having a colossally bad day, if he needs more help than this mainstream school can provide, or if he’s somewhere in the massive gray area in between. The last thing I ever want to do is seem as though I’m judging a child’s behavior, especially if it’s something he simply cannot help. So . . . what, then? I’m thinking I probably didn’t need to blurt out some random OMG I SAWR ME AN ANGRY KID post on Twitter, but in the moment, what should I have done? What if it happens again? How do I be the protective parent and the understanding community at the same time?

I’ve been trying to remember if the nurse I had during my last Pap smear stuck her finger in my asshole or if there was an instrument of some kind. An instrument that was then inserted into my asshole.

I know, I know, you came here for kid pictures or whatever and here I am talking about things being crammed in my ass, but there is an actual train of thought that leads from a topic to the inside of my butt.

What I’m saying, aside from the fact that I find it a bit disturbing I can’t remember what exactly went in in my ass, is that the nurse in question was very young. I mean, she was as nice as could be and I liked her quite a bit right up until the moment when she asked me to bend over and squeal like a pig (I am paraphrasing), but the fact that she likely had no knowledge of a world that included V.I.C.I., the humanoid robot girl in Small Wonder, took a wildly uncomfortable situation and made it even more so. I don’t know why it’s worse to have a young person anally violate you, it just is.

There are certain professions I feel should be limited to people who are Older Than Myself, and gynecology is definitely one of them. Police officers should also not be my age or younger, especially if they’re wearing mirrored aviator shades like a total douchebag and writing me a goddamned 32 MPH-in-a-25-zone ticket.

The whole reason I was thinking of this recently is because most of the kindergarten teachers in Riley’s school are fairly young, and although this certainly doesn’t bother me (as long as they don’t suddenly lunge at my anus with some sort of probe), it doesn’t jive with the picture I have in my head of a teacher. This is because I am having an bizarrely difficult time adjusting to the idea that I am not a school-age student, but the mother of a school-age student. In my mind I’m still the one who will be graded and possibly sent to the pricipal’s office if I don’t straighten up and fly right; instead, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman who needs to interact with teachers like a GROWNUP instead of vying for approval or being vaguely worried that they’ll smack me with a ruler.

In the few days since school has started there have been a lot of adjustments—new routines, new responsibilities, new schedules. It’s all been good, but I look at myself—making lunches, filling out paperwork, talking with teachers, planning for my first PTA meeting—and I can hardly believe it. Is this . . . ME? I suppose that sounds a little ridiculous, but I don’t know how else to say it, really. It’s just sort of a momentous sort of thing, this new rite of motherhood. One that stirs up a strange swirl of old memories and associations and makes me wonder if I’m even remotely qualified for this shit.

It’s funny, I expected to be overwhelmed by the milestone of my child starting school, but I didn’t quite realize what an enormous new role it would be for me, too.

Anyway, I’m glad the teachers are young and generally look energetic and motivated and capable of dealing with their teeming Lord of the Flies throngs on a daily basis. But if any of them decides to leave kindergarten behind for a career in reproductive health, I’d like her to wait a few years, maybe develop some authoritative gray in her hair and wrinkles around her eyes, before donning the latex glove and gel lubricant and rooting around where the sun don’t shine. I’m just saying.

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