Riding the roller coaster

There's a scene in the movie Parenthood that illustrates pretty obviously the metaphor of life as a roller coaster. There's a children's school play in progress, and the youngest child of one of the parental pairs in the movie takes some lines in the play too seriously--he thinks people are teasing his sister on the stage--and he rushes the little actors. Chaos ensues. His father, played by Steve Martin, becomes tense and wary and freaked out even as just about everyone else around him is laughing their asses off, save one audience member, a frantic mother who yells, "He's ruining the play!! He's ruining the whole play!!!" The entire scene takes place to the sound of a roller coaster rushing along its tracks.

Whether or not you like roller coasters is one thing, but pretty much anyone would recognize the neuroticism of the parent who freaks out over an elementary school production of "Snow White" and becomes distraught over the idea that the play is being "ruined." Sadly, I may be a little bit like this woman, except that my neuroticism homes in on my own child. What is he ruining today?

I don't like roller coasters. My physiology is primed right at the edge as it is, thank you, and I simply do not need the extra stimulus overload. Soccer lately has become my roller coaster, and, to paraphrase a senior citizen's line from Parenthood, I like the merry-go-round better sometimes because it just goes around and around.

We were going to skip soccer yesterday. It's the last week and Saturday is a large come-to-Jeebus soccer meeting involving playing other teams and other unpleasant competitive stuff. The game is also at 2:45 p.m., and given that we hit a high of 90-something around here yesterday, I just don't want to inflict that kind of pain on any member of my family, TH included. But when TH got home from school yesterday, he insisted that he wanted to go to soccer practice. This behavior is counter to his usual response when I say we need to get ready for soccer...but OK. I told him to get dressed, and he did, with a boost from me on shin guards and cleats.

Little Da prevents our attendance at soccer practice with only one parent because of his insistence on running onto the soccer field or climbing to the top of an age-inappropriate playscape and melting down repeatedly if prevented from getting himself killed. So, I drop TH off, trusting in his excellent coach who has known him for two years now and who just last week sent a concerned email asking us how to manage some of the problems TH has been having in practice and games. These problems relate to body-space issues and his crazy legs. Emails like that depress me in some indefinable way.

When we returned an hour later to pick up TH, I stepped out of the car and almost immediately heard a child from his team scream so that the four winds could carry it to the corners of the globe: "TH is sooooo MEAN!!!" This poor child hollered this as he cried his eyes out, hugging his mother, devastated.

I almost didn't move. As this child hollered out, I was leaning on my car, wearing an awful pink t-shirt from Target that has whales all over it, cartoon whales with cartoon whale spouts, a shirt I hadn't intended for public consumption, a shirt I wear around my house because it is thin and comfortable but that I would not want to be caught dead in by any living person. My crazy, stupid, I'm-on-the-Merry-go-Round idea had been that I'd pull up, load up my son, and move on.

Instead, I found myself trekking down the hill to where this little boy stood, still crying. As I approached, I heard, out of the corner of my ear, a child say, "He's not that mean. He's actually kind of nice once you get to know him." In spite of my deep concern, the nausea in my gut from this dip in the roller coaster ride, I logged that one in my head for later perusal. Briefly, I enjoyed the view from the top of the roller coaster tracks.

The mother was very understanding. Her son was upset because TH had gotten too close to his face and spoken too loudly, and in the boy's words, had made him really uncomfortable. I looked around and noted that TH was utterly oblivious to any of this, completely unaware that this child was mad and unhappy with him, that I was standing there talking to the child and his mother...any of it. He was wandering aimlessly around the field, kicking a ball. I called him over.

As TH approached, I just said as simply as I could to the little boy that TH has a problem in his brain that makes it hard for him to know when he's doing something like that and someone else doesn't like it. The mother nodded knowingly, and I could have kissed her for her obvious understanding. TH apologized, asked the child how he was doing. I talked a little bit more with the little boy, telling him that this is TH's problem and something he has to fix himself, but that any time he does something like that, the best thing is to let him know how angry he (the boy) is about it. I also said that I really think in a couple of years that TH won't be doing this so much, adding my own profuse apologies to my son's more casual tenders. The very kind mother actually said, "And just think...the two of you might be best friends or something like that. You never know!" Again, I could have kissed her.

Except that right as she said that, another child walked by, a child who always feels compelled to come and tell me any time I walk into the classroom--which is often--what TH's latest transgressions have been. He walked by and casually observed, overhearing that comment about friendship, that "TH has hardly any friends at all."

Up. Down. He's mean. He's OK once you get to know him. He's making people uncomfortable. He could really be someone's friend. He's got hardly any friends. Sigh.

I went to collect Dubya from the playground next to the fields and encountered yet another parent. I'd observed this parent counseling TH about something at the end of practice and asked him what was going on. Body issue things, he reported. I asked if TH had butted heads with another little boy on the team, something that happens frequently. He responded yes and then went on to inform me that the child in question often comes home crying about his encounters with TH. I responded that I had already been made aware of that, as per several previous conversations.

Then, I collected my children and took them and my beautiful pink cartoon whale shirt home, having exhibited said shirt along with my heart on its sleeve to approximately six different people.

When I asked TH on the drive home if he thought he was a mean person, he said, "Yes." I asked why, and he said, "Because he (the other little boy) thought I was mean." We had a discussion about intent vs. accident that I hope he understands. I lectured him (again) on what it means to respect body space. We discussed the comment about his having few friends, which he clearly had heard. "How many good friends does a person need to have?" I asked. "A lot? Or a few?" "Just a few," he answered. "Even just one is good, right?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "And you even have two or three, right?" I asked. "Yes," he said, comfortably, securely. "I'm good."

Poor child. Burdened with a mother neurotic about his every little move, about all the little ups and downs that take place among first-grade boys, riding an emotional, tense roller coaster against her will, watching other little boys play with each other while her son kicks it alone on the soccer field, feeling every dip and rise and turn and sudden stop along the tracks. I'm not an overt Helicopter Mom--I fly under the radar. But he doesn't even seem to know he's on this ride, and as long as there are a couple of friends around, he's good.

TH likes roller coasters. I think he inherits that from his father.