How Little Girls are Evil and Seth Broke the Drive Shaft on Our Pickup

Here’s a little peek at the highlights and low lights of last week:

Monday: Jackson comes home from school with stories of being bullied on the playground and even a little in the classroom. This has turned into a daily occurrence for the past few weeks, but I was sure that the recess monitors were watching what was happening on the playground and that he was probably exaggerating a little. I mean, the adults responsible for keeping an eye on recess activities are actually watching what is happening and would notice if a child is being picked on, pushed down, called names, etc….right? Especially when said child approaches the monitors and tells them what happened, right? A responsible adult wouldn’t tell that child, “Too bad. I can’t help you” right?

Tuesday: Seth leaves on an elk hunt with his friend Brent until the end of the week and there are more stories from Jackson that night about being bullied during recess including some very mean little girls who have been harassing him, calling him names, tripping him, stomping on his stomach, hitting his back, etc. I think about calling the school, but I’m not really sure who to call and again, the recess monitors would have seen something like this, right? This sort of thing couldn’t possibly be happening right in front of adults whose job is to watch for something like this, right?

Wednesday: I get a call at work from Jackson’s school with the news that some girls had chased him down during recess, tackled him to the ground and proceeded to try to pull his pants off and tell him that they are going to kiss a certain part of his male anatomy. Two boys noticed what was happening and ran over to help Jackson, which attracted the attention of some other children. The recess monitors still didn’t notice until seven children were in a full on brawl that involved one of the boys smearing dog poo on one of the girls. My assumption that the adults in the area were, you know, doing their job, was very mistaken.

I was so horrified and outraged that I almost left work to take Jackson home, but since he wasn’t hurt or traumatized, I didn’t want to put too big of an emphasis on what had happened, so decided to let him finish school as the day was almost over, give myself until the next day to calm down, hear Jackson’s side of the story and decide on a plan of action. The school also let me know that the boys and girls would not be allowed to play together at recess until after Christmas and that any game involving chasing would not be allowed until then either. I let the school know that they should be checking in on what is going on in the homes of those little seven-year old girls to give them the idea to attack my son like that in the first place. Shudder.

Thursday: Seth calls me during a baby shower that I’m putting on after work for my manager to say that he got stuck in the snow with the pickup and broke the drive shaft so his dad was coming to pull him out, but they needed me to show Dale how to get to where Seth was. At least Seth was at a high enough elevation that he had reception, or the guys would have had to walk 12 miles to the nearest phone.

I run home after the shower, make supper for the boys and Collette who has offered to watch them (she’s been helping out a ton lately and I don’t know what we would do without her), Dale picks me up after the dealership closes for the day and we make the 2 hour drive to find Seth and Brent. The closest we could get to the pickup was about 1/4 mile away, so Seth and Brent walked to us and agreed to go back on Friday with Brent’s pickup to pull ours out. If you know Seth, you know that he had to really be stuck if he couldn’t get out. He literally goes places that would be impossible for anyone else. We got home around midnight, went to bed, and Seth left at 5 the next morning to pull the pickup out.

Friday: I am in a foul mood from lack of sleep and missing my morning run so I write a nasty email to Jackson’s teacher that I promptly delete without sending. I write a much nicer email asking to meet with her and the principal. As I’m near the end of our street on my way to drop the boys off at school a cement truck and a pickup are parked in front of a new build and completely blocking the street. I wait a while, but the four guys standing in the street don’t seem inclined to move the pickup to let me around the truck so I flip them the bird in my mind, smile and wave, turn around and go the other way. Once I make it to school, another parent is parked across the driveway that I need to get through to drop Jackson off for before school care which he goes to in order to allow me time to get Tucker across town to his school in the mornings. By this time, I’m really irritated and I inch forward trying to get around him while he seems in no hurry to move and waits until his son has walked all the way up the driveway and into the building. It’s like watching paint dry.

Later, I receive a call from the principal and set up a time for me and Seth to meet with him and Jackson’s teacher the following week. I’m ready to talk rationally about what happened and I’m planning to bring up the fact that I’m disturbed by the teacher’s policy of not allowing parents to drop in unannounced which I’m pretty sure will be news to the principal. Insert evil chuckle here.

Meanwhile, Seth shoots an elk while he and Brent are on the way to pick up their campsite and pull the pickup out which is several miles from where they were camped. The elk didn’t drop, but left a substantial blood trail, so the guys looked for it as long as they could before going on to the campsite and then the pickup. Seth tied the broken drive shaft up, put chains on the tires and they made it out in time to pick the boys up from school.

Saturday: The boys and I get up early to go with Seth and help look for the elk. It snowed overnight, but Seth finds the blood trail again and the four of us spread out and walk in a line back and forth for two hours looking for the elk until the boys start to get cold. Seth looks by himself for another hour before giving up and we bring the boys home.

So basically, little girls are evil, Seth broke the drive shaft on the pickup and is now driving a pretty rad maroon van (courtesy of his parents) while it’s in the shop, and I’m praying that the warranty covers the repair work that has to be done. Seth is obsessing over the elk and I would rather that he looked for it with the pickup than taking a borrowed minivan on back woods trails in search of something that could have walked for a mile before finally dropping, so hopefully it will be repaired quickly.

Anyhoo, that was last week. Hopefully this one will go much better!