Mountain Momma Musings

You try to be a good mom. You try to practice patience and understanding. You buy your kids presents, give them candy, let them talk you into buying them a treat every time you go to the store. You kiss them and hug them and love them when they are sick. You put up with them hitting you and yelling at you and screaming and throwing tantrums and whining.

And this is what you get:

“Mom, Mrs. Randall never yells, she never even gets mad,” Kaiden tells me about his kindergarten teacher.

“Really?” I ask, quite shocked at this revelation. Wow, she must be a saint. Twenty-five kids and she never so much as raises her voice?

“I wish Mrs. Randall was my mom.”

OUCH! A straight punch to the gut. That one hurt.

My first reaction, however, was to laugh. “What? You’d rather have Mrs. Randall as your mom than me?”

“Yeah,” he says in a voice that really meant, “Duh. What do you think?”

I don’t know if this Mrs. Randall has kids or not. I’ll have to find out. But I bet you a gazillion, billion dollars – as Kaiden would say – that if she does has kids she yelled at them once or twice during their 18 years at home.

“What about Mrs. Beye? I ask Kaiden about his other team teacher, searching for something to make me feel better. “Does she yell?”

“Yeah, she gets mad. I like Mrs. Randall better.”

Aha!, I thought, I know which teacher I’m giving an apple to: Mrs. Beye. At least she’s not making me look bad.

I tried one more thing to convince Kaiden that he still wants me as his mother.

“Well, Kaiden, you know, if Mrs. Randall was your mom you’d have to do homework all the time. Like every single night. And on weekends.”

“Oh, then never mind. I guess I’ll keep you.”

Yes! I win!

I think I deserve an A+ for creativity. And deceit. We all gotta be good at something, other than yelling.