Public Enemy (Grade) 1

I have probably mentioned that my daughter has possibly more than the standard allotment of personality. As my son is fond of saying (when he’s not shrieking her name at jet-takeoff decibels), “Dad, she’s a rascal, dad.” He has in some ways keen powers of observation, but you don’t have to watch her for long to figure out – if not how her mind works, exactly, definitely toward what end.

The first weekend after she started kindergarten, we received a phone call from her teacher. When she identified herself, my heart sank and I immediately imagined all sorts of issues my girl had gotten into in her three-day educational career. But the teacher immediately put my mind at ease: “She’s already become quite a leader. Some of the other kids are timid about trying new things, but when they see that she’s willing to try anything, it puts them at ease.” So I was relieved and only a bit surprised to find she was using her superpowers for good, rather than for evil.

Since then, the teacher reports have been generally quite glowing… although there have been the occasional incidents of Interpersonal Clash (I may have mentioned as well that she is a junior member of the International Society of Frequently Wrong, But Never In Doubt). In any case, we always experience that delightful jolt of uncertainty when it’s the teacher on the phone – as was the case last week.

This time it was not a plaudit, but instead the news that she had been overheard using… colorful language. It would be impolite of me to specify the color, but suffice it to say it was not a word from her spelling list, not to mention one she hadn’t encountered at home.

And yes, I know that’s what they all say, but although all of us in the house are capable of expressing ourselves with force and clarity, I can say with some assurance that she didn’t hear it here, or at the church.

The teacher hastened to add that she had had a visit with the principal and that she seemed visibly and almost violently remorseful. This is as good a time as any to mention that, especially as former teachers, my wife & I make a practice of backing the teacher to the hilt; we told her that we appreciated her dealing with this swiftly and firmly (this is not a girl, if I have not already made this clear, who does well with a long leash).

When she got home, I waited to see if she’d betray any hint of her ordeal, but when her lips (for once) seemed sealed, I confronted her directly with the Stern, Solemn Talk. I told her that these were not words that she learned or heard or would be permitted to use at home, and that we expected her to behave in a respectful and correct way at all times. I impressed on her the embarrassment attached to going to the principal and having the teacher call home; I know she’s sensitive to being embarrassed. She told me that she was just “repeating” the words – which apparently doesn’t count as “saying” the words – and that she wouldn’t do it again.

When mom arrived, we went through the drill once more – this time with a trifle more, um… emphasis. And this time she revealed something I didn’t know: not only had she employed the word I’d already heard (a relatively junior officer in the Colorful Language Army), but had in fact let loose with the Head Honcho, the dreaded F-bomb. In fact, to prove it, she set one off right then & there in the living room.

My wife was looking at my face when our 6-year-old girl launched it, and she said the color completely drained from me. I have to admit, that was a milestone experience for me, and not in the best possible sense.

Well, washing her mouth out with Clorox seemed inadvisable, so we had to settle for a just-short-of-unhinged lecture and withdrawal of Electronic Privileges (Game Boy, videos, CD player) for one week. And as we all know, there are few more stringent sentences in the modern world than to be unplugged.

I’d like to think that for a normal kid, that would’ve been the end of the story. But in the midst of this, she also slipped in, “By the way, dad, you need to send in money for my cafeteria account.” I knew I’d just sent in money recently, and she’d brought her lunch every day since, so I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I quizzed her: “You’re just getting milk every day – right?” “Yeah, dad, just milk!” When I looked at the check register, I realized I’d sent in $10 one week prior. All I could figure is that maybe the check didn’t make it all the way to be deposited somehow, so I grabbed the phone book to look up the bank’s 800-number so I could find out whether it had cleared.

That’s when she said, “Um, dad, I think I need to tell you the truth about something.” She had been buying a lunch every day, in addition to bringing a lunch with her. I asked her why; was it to be cool or like the other kids? “No, I just like it.”

So in addition to her Electronic Grounding, she also was lunch-grounded the same day: her account was closed, and she was told all she could buy for the rest of the school year was white milk.

Seeing how much she’s testing our parental ingenuity at age 6, it seems to me like I ought to go on amazon.com or eBay or some such place and find out what it takes to pick up an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. Ought to come in handy right about 2nd grade.