Peg Knows It’s the Little Things That Make A Difference

From my blog, dated May 6, 2005.  Here is the link: http://pegkerr.livejournal.com/436909.html

I came to pick the girls up at the YMCA [after school daycare], and Fiona made a beeline for my arms and buried herself in them. I quickly realized she was in tears. “Here now, what’s all this?”

“I had a bad day.” I sat her down on the bench, and coaxed the story out. It started with a substitute teacher who ranted at the class “for a half an hour!” because the students didn’t write on an assignment to the length he specified. “We had to stay inside and do social studies all over again instead of going outside during our free time,” she said tragically. “But I’d done it right in the first place.” She squeezed my waist more tightly. “I’m tired of being punished because of other people.” There were other woes, involving a basketball that clocked her on her cheekbone, a girl who woke her up when she was sleeping on the bus, and more.

I made sympathetic noises as I gathered her stuff and Delia’s stuff and shepherded them out to the car. I buckled them in as Fiona continued with tale. ” . . . And then we had to go up to the gym, and it was Erika, and she was just awful . . .”

I went around to my side, started up the car, half-listening, and heard, just as I was about to pull into traffic, “. . . and Deeana tried to take it and then I tried to take it, but Erika said no, give it to a boy. Girls can’t carry the ball bag.”

I slammed on the brakes. “What? What did you say?”

She blinked at me. “‘Girls can’t carry the ball bag.’ That’s what Erika said.”

“Is Erika a counselor?”

“Yeah.”

I put the car back into reverse and then put it in park. “Excuse me for a minute. This is something I have to tell Steve. This is important.”

I went back inside and found the day care director. I repeated the substance of what Fiona told me to Steve and Liz. Both of their eyebrows rose. “Um, that doesn’t sound right,” Liz said.

“It certainly doesn’t.” I fixed them both with my best steely-bitch stare. “I don’t want to hear that counselors at the Y are telling my child she can’t do anything because of her gender. All right?”

I eventually got Fiona and Delia to both come in and repeat their stories. Delia had tried to carry the ball bag before, and been rebuffed by Erika, too. “She told me to give it to a boy to carry.”

“Sometimes we need to work with kids on their manners. Maybe she said that because she’s trying to teach the boys to offer to carry things, to be polite?” Liz wondered aloud.

“Maybe,” I said, skeptically, but willing to be convinced.

Steve came back from talking to Erika. “It seems that one of the smallest children in the class, Deanna, asked to carry it, but it was really too big for her. Erika wanted it be carried by someone who was big enough to handle it.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t have to be a boy,” Fiona said. “I can certainly carry it.”

I thought of her lugging around her big bag of karate sparring equipment and had to agree. “Maybe that’s what she meant, but it’s not the lesson the children are getting from her. Do you see?”

“We certainly do.” Steve looked determined. “From now on, we’ll make sure everyone gets a chance to carry the ball bag.”

That’s all I can ask. I’m glad I spoke up.