Trouble in Paradise

Two hours after I posted this afternoon, the kids came home from school. As always, I asked how their day had gone.

Mad Scientist had a rough day – my kind of rough day. He’d left his jacket at school, so he spent the pre-school recess shivering in temps that hovered just above freezing. He forgot his lunch, so he went hungry.  Then got laughed at for forgetting it!

The worst of his day, though, was an incident that I’d call bullying, no doubt about it.

The school really IS amazing, and when I called the principal, she was wonderful. I’m sure they’ll deal with the actual bullying part of the day.

But yanno what bothers me most? As he was leaving school, hours later, the same kid asked him, “Are you a dumb American or a smart Canadian?”

Now, I know there’s an undercurrent of resentment for Americans here. Mars has told me some of the comments he’s heard, once people relax enough to speak freely around him. And I know Americans sometimes act like real boobs when they travel abroad, so in a way we bring this on ourselves (though I make an effort to try not to act like an arrogant American). And I know there are people who make thoughtless comments, never realizing how hurtful they are or that their children are listening — and may parrot those comments later on the school yard.

And I know there are people who make bigoted comments because that’s the way they think, and frankly, I’m more than prepared to just ignore people like that.

But it hurt that my son is the one to face the bigotry, and It hurt to realize the one piece of my life that was going unabashedly well was developing cracks.

I spent the afternoon talking to (and then emailing) the principal. I talked for a long time to Mad Scientist, both trying to get the full story from him and trying to reassure him about it. By the time Mars got home, I was in a rush.

Remember I said I’d found a book club and writers group I hadn’t attended yet? Well, they both met tonight for the first time (the book club usually meets on Thursdays, but it was a special event).

After dealing with Mad Scientist’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good day, I was in a rush to get ready — and in my hurry, I slammed my pinkie finger into a drawer. Bad enough to draw blood. Bad enough to pack with ice while I ate one-handed. I’ll probably lose the fingernail, and it hurts to type (thank goodness, it was the pinkie! Otherwise, I’d have to stop using e’s, t’s and r’s). Then I took the quickest shower ever, washing my hair one-handed, and threw on makeup.

I had trouble finding the library because it’s in the back of a professional office building (and unlabeled from the front). I only realize I was in the right place when I saw the signs in the parking lot that said, “Library parking only.”

I dashed in, asked the front desk where the writers group was meeting, and burst into a closed board room — only to find a group of people clearly at least thirty minutes into a meeting, staring at me.

Finally one of them asked, “Are you here for the general meeting?”

“No,” I said. “The writers group.”

Nobody knew anything about it. The leader is apparently on maternity leave, but there’s a fill-in, and they’d gotten no word that it had been canceled. I thought about going to the book club meeting instead, but I’d be late, and I wasn’t entirely sure where it was anyway since the link the leader sent didn’t work and it wasn’t listed on the library website.

In the end, I drove home, crying the whole way, and thinking I would just crawl into bed and stay for a week.

But I won’t, of course. Last night, Mars and I attended a school council meeting, and I ended up signing up as the council secretary for the year. So now I have to leave the house. And do stuff. And meet people.

It’ll be good for me.