Little Prick

Today I went to pick the kids up from after-school care. Tuesdays are the busiest day for me with back to back English lessons finishing at 5:30. The kids’ soccer starts at 6pm. I have half an hour to go get them, feed them, make sure they get into the soccer gear, don’t forget their water bottles or shinguards and gloves or neck warmers or whatever other paraphernalia they just have to have when practice is on a freezing day with flutters of snow.

We usually get there about ten minutes late. But I digress, this post isn’t about soccer.

I went to pick them up and Marina immediately tells me that she found two needles in her ugh-boot type boots  today. I appear a bit shocked and say wow, I hope she was OK, that needles don’t fall from the sky into people’s shoes and that I will have a word to her teacher the following day. I say this in front of the after-school care woman who proceeds to say absolutely nothing and sees us on our way – reminding me that both kids need $1 and an apron for the cooking class tomorrow. (thank god I just wrote that as now have reminded self again) It doesn’t cross my mind that the situation might have occurred at after-school club. I just thought it must have happened during the day – what with the woman not saying anything.

I pile the kids in the car and we drive off. I ask Marina if her foot is OK and she said yes because she had socks on so it was only a couple of little pricks. We establish that the ‘needles’ were in fact drawing pins which she promptly gave to the after-school care woman who has just waved us off without a word. This is the woman who everyday for a frickin month would tell me how Shou told HTB to get out of the way and HTB was upset yaddah yaddah. Hmmmm. Get out of the way vs drawing pins in shoes…

Am a bit perplexed as to why she wouldn’t even mention it as really, like I said, drawing pins don’t end up in shoes by accident.

BUT, it is Tuesday so I also have dinner and soccer stuff going through my head and Marina herself is absolutely fine about the whole thing and didn’t seem upset, or even say, that somebody wanted her to hurt herself.

I nonchalantly ask Shou if he knows anything about it and he says no – in a way that makes me want to believe him but makes me think I should wait till we are in the bath and then ask him again in a different way. It isn’t that I don’t believe my son – OK, so actually that is exactly what it sounds like – but he is going through a lying phase.

Take last night for instance. I am tucking him into bed when I can sense something is out of sorts so I ask him if he happened to bring any of dad’s gum that was sitting on the bench to bed – he says no, I raise an eyebrow, and he produces three pieces from his sleeve like the magician he wishes he was but sadly isn’t. I pick a few things up off his floor and ‘nonchalantly’ (one of my favorite parenting weapons) say that falling asleep chewing gum could be super dangerous and could block an airway…. OK, so that is perhaps nonchalantly and kind of scary – BUT it produces the second to last piece of gum I knew was there. It takes him about forty minutes to get to sleep because he’s scared the piece of gum he swallowed when he heard me coming might somehow travel back up his esophagus and he might die.

Not to worry though because he did get to sleep and when I checked in on him his head was resting on about five pillows and in the morning he said it was because he wanted to keep his airway free of reverse traveling magic gum.

So, anyhoo, I drop the kids at soccer and come home to find hub home from work. I mention the pins in the shoes and he immediately rings the after-school care woman, who immediately says it could have happened during school hours (so officially not their fault), so hub immediately rings Marina’s teacher, who immediately asked exactly where the pins were in the shoe because if they were at the back then they were obviously put in their during after-school care (so officially not the school’s fault) – but if the pins were put in while Marina’s shoes were in her shoe locker during class hours they would have then dislodged and moved to the front of the shoe when she picked them up to take them to after-school care.

Our after-school care program is run from a big classroom beside Marina’s classroom. The kids wear indoor gym shoes inside and when they go to the after school care program they put their shoes on and walk around the side of the building to the entrance from the outside.

Marina went outside at this particular point in time wearing her sneakers – not her fury boots – which she held in her hands and took around.

Hub is visibly quite pissed that both parties are trying to place the blame on someone else. Bullying is taken very seriously at the moment and our school has a zero tolerance and when the father of one of their kids, who works in the education department at the city hall, rings up and wants to know what will be done tomorrow to address the problem, everyone starts getting antsy.

He tells Marina’s teacher that we aren’t interested in finding out exactly who did it but would like the school to tell the kids and inform them that silly bugger antics like that is officially ‘bullying’ and won’t be tolerated. I want to know because if it was the first graders I would be OK about it and know that it was silliness and not an intentional act to hurt her, but if it was an older kid I want fuckin blood you sorry ass cunt for doing that to my kid.

Just joking.

Kind of.

It will be interesting to see how this story plays out tomorrow. The after school care lady has kept the pins so perhaps hub can take his print dusting kit to school and CSI himself some answers :). We have ascertained that Marina went outside in said boots FROM after-school care and she was fine. She then went back inside, did her homework for half an hour and then went back outside in same aforementioned boots and it was at this time that the pins tried to lodge themselves into her foot via her smelly socks.

And the whole thing just left me gagging for wine and when I asked hub if he fancied me picking up something he said perhaps we could have just one drink to get over the trauma of some other kids doing mean shit to our kid. So I declined because really I should at LEAST be able to have a drink for each drawing pin and if that’s not allowed then flag it, I’ll wait till Friday night 🙂

SDGH&QL