The First of Many

Sassy’s private school has a gym teacher, and the lower grades have organized PE with him twice a week.  My beautiful Sassy came to me last year during her first week of kindergarten with a request.

“I’m gonna need a note,” she informed me.

“What for?” I asked.

“For P.E.  I’m not going back there.”

“Why? P.E. is fun!” I said with false enthusiasm.  I don’t think for one minute that P.E. is fun.  I didn’t in school, and I don’t now.  Even when Isabella and I were going to the gym and meeting with a personal trainer three times a week, I bitched and moaned through the whole thing.  That would probably explain my physique.  But, I’m a mom now, and therefore, duty bound to be enthusiastic about crappy things like homework and creamed corn.

“Mom,” she said with her hip cocked and that long suffering expression she’d mastered even at 5, “P.E. is just not my thing.”

Of course, I did not give her a note.  I’m the Worlds Meanest Mom.  This is not a title I hold lightly.  I made her keep going and, lo if something amazing didn’t happen.  Within two weeks, it turned out she loved basketball.  HA!  I later discovered that the real deal wasn’t an ever abiding love of air inflated balls and sweating, my sweet Sassy had a crush on Coach.  Coach, as they call him (they’re young and have no sense of irony) is a young, good looking man.  I thought it was adorable.  Her father, not so much.  Men are weird.

At dinner this evening, I asked Katie about her day.  She is now old enough that I have to fish information from her, and then I have to weed out the truths from the exaggerated and entirely fabricated fiction.  Six year olds are complicated.  I can’t wait until she’s thirteen.  I’m going go ask for an epidural when she starts getting her period.   I asked if she had P.E. today.  She nodded that she did. 

“You still loooooooove Coach?” I teased.

She got an expression on her face I didn’t immediately recognize.  “I don’t like Coach anymore.  Not like that.”

“Oh.  Why?”

“Because he got a hair cut.  AND he didn’t even notice that I got mine cut.”  She was very indignant.

What a disappointment.  I guess there are some lessons that are best learned young.