Bad Company

I listened to Lars' story and took notes. Not because I intended to do anything with them. I'd need to reread them when my head stopped spinning.

Lars had gone to the school. He'd filed a report with Pat. He was confident that something would be done to rectify the situation, but really agitated that it had happened.

Pat has a friend named Kevin that he plays XBox with. Kevin is a sort of misfit kid. Scrawny and ungroomed. Unsupervised and foul-mouthed. Traits Pat is likely to overlook because of the XBox rivalry.

But Kevin evidently teamed up with two other punks and set about making Pat's life a little more miserable than necessary, and suddenly, Kevin was not only not playing Xbox with Pat, he was ostracizing him at the lunch table, and harassing at the lab table in science, and even resorted to hitting him on the school steps. Twice. Pat was bothered by the team approach, but really offended by Kevin. They were supposed to be friends.

And Pat is a gentle soul. Expects the best from people. Is stunned when people choose to be mean. Middle School is really not his scene.

So Lars completed the complaint form. He was a little concerned that the 7th grade principal, who pulls double duty as the school disciplinarian and is therefore involved in an 8th grade incident, seemed so excited at the chance to use the schools shiny new reporting form. (Oooohhh, we get to use the new blue form oh boy oh boy oh boy!) But he'd helped Pat complete the questions and carefully spell out "assault" and "harassed" and identify the three little punks who were involved, and name the ring leader.

Lars was cautiously optimistic that he'd put the situation to bed and had wanted me to know the details. Pat and Hil were coming back to me in two days and he owed me an explanation before the kids offered me their version. And he got a chance to go on and on about his parental heroism, natch.

But I was having a more visceral reaction. I longed to hug both kids and stroke their hair and tell them I could fix it all in record time. And I felt physically sick and fought back tears for hours. And when I felt like I could leave my office and speak without whimpering, I was surprised to realize how angry I'd become. Nothing frosts my cakes worse than feeling powerless. I wanted more than anything to make sure this was handled my way.

And the she-wolf in me, the mama bear we are all born with, the Estelle without a muzzle or a leash I can sometimes become was blood-thirsty.

In my heart, what I truly wanted to do was go to the school, walk into the cafeteria, and tap Kevin on the shoulder as he sat making snarky conversation with the other two future flunkies. And when he'd turn around, I'd rake my fingernails down his face and bloody it so badly that he'd spend the next month explaining that some lady did it to him because he was a nasty little piss ant with nothing but petty crime and jail sentences to look forward to.

Instead I took deep cleansing breaths, and began to do my homework on the subject of bullying.