Back to School

Today is Cameron's first day of school and he could hardly wait to be back in the classroom. A full three hours before school starts he announced, "Mommy! I'm all dressed! Let's go to school." This repeated approximately every 20 minutes until finally, finally, FINALLY it was time to go.

On the drive we continued our tradition of listening to an audio book. Our first selection of the year is "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The "Little House" series was a childhood favorite of mine and, so far, Cameron is enthralled. I, however, am finding that there are certain events in the book that, as an adult, I find disturbing. This is likely compounded by my recent reading of "Lies My Teacher Told Me," a fascinating look at the difference between what we are taught in high school history and what actually happened. As a result, I'm driving Cameron crazy. Our drive went something like this:

Narrator: "Pa," said Laura, "why do the Indians go west?"
"Well, Laura, when the white people come the Indians must go west."
"As they should," said Ma. "The land should belong to people who will farm it, not to savage men. That only makes sense."

Me: (hitting pause button) Did you hear that Cameron? Ma didn't like the Native Americans. She thought they were mean. I think she was afraid of them because they looked different and acted different. But different isn't bad, right? The Native Americans weren't bad or mean. And, actually, when Ma says that the land should belong to people who will farm it, well, there were many Native Americans who did farm until the white settlers pushed them off of the land! So that's not really fair. And . . .

Cameron: Uh huh. OK Mommy. Sooooo, can we listen to the CD now?

I know. I'm a barrel full of laughs, aren't I?

When we arrived at school, I walked Cameron to his classroom where he excitedly hung up his backpack, greeted his teacher and selected a work.

"Are you ready to say good-bye?" I asked.

Without looking up from his work, Cameron gave a cheerful, "Bye!" while I stood, like a fool, arms outstretched for a hug. You know that move where you hold out your hand, realize the other person isn't going to shake your hand, and you disguise the effort by slicking back your hair? Yeah, well, there is no cool move for disguising a hug that isn't returned!