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Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 

I don't embarrass easily, but...

I told this story to my mother yesterday, and she thought it was hilarious, so I'll share it with you now. I'm still not so sure I think it's funny.

We were at the Day Out With Thomas last Saturday, and they had a couple of tables set up with train sets. Even though we have train sets at home which get at least an hour or two of play a day, we had to stop and play with these tables, too. As did every other preschooler in all of southern Ontario. It was kind of like a beehive, and with Thomas as their queen.

As you can imagine, there were a few ugly moments as one little boy would decide that it was his turn RIGHT NOW to have a train, and there was a lot of grabbing and coveting and hoarding and other inspiring behaviour going on. In fact, Tristan's only tears of the day came later in the day when he was playing at the table and put his train down for a minute to move around the table and a parent (a parent, mind you) snatched the train away to give to his child while pretending not to notice Tristan's obvious upset. I wasn't there to witness that one, lucky for the other parent.

But I digress. At the moment in question, Tristan was playing happily with one of the trains, as were probably half a dozen other kids. Every now and then a new child would walk up, but some other child would leave, and there was a fairly impressive amount of sharing going on. At one point, one little boy reached over and tried to take away the train from Tristan, and Tristan took two steps backward and held the train to his chest with a worried look on his face. The parent of the other child intervened and told him to wait for his turn, and all was well. Suddenly, the entire museum full of people fell silent at the exact same time, just in time for everyone within a three mile range to hear Tristan shout across the table to me, "Mummy, did you see that? That kid tried to kill me!"

I was mortified. I don't embarrass easily. He could have shouted out anything about penises or farts or boogers or any of the other stuff preschool boys come out with, and I would have just laughed it off. But that one floored me. I had absolutely no idea how to react, so like a good mother, I sputtered.

"Tristan," I gasped, in my best scandalized voice, "we don't - he didn't - you shouldn't - it's not - " and then I stopped talking and switched to praying that the floor would just open up and swallow me whole.

I'm still not sure I think this is a funny story. I honestly have no idea where he would come up with something like that, but the older kids at daycare is probably a good bet.

Share your mortification moment and make me feel better about mine!