Last Friday afternoon, Oscar got into his first confrontation.
I picked him up from nursery at 3.00 p.m. as usual. Then we wandered round to the school to pick up the girls.
Mole was in the playground, and he and Oscar zoomed off to play some elaborate game with some cones that the teacher had left out after P.E.
It was all going swimmingly until a bigger boy, who should still have been in class, wandered over. He has a reputation as a trouble maker, and Mole’s mother and I kept a weather eye out, unsure as to what the boy was doing. He started to pick up the cones. We relaxed a little, assuming that the teacher had sent him to pack up.
Then I noticed that Oscar was right up in the child’s face, talking very earnestly. I paid closer attention, but nothing else happened except that the bigger boy looked faintly bemused.
Children started pouring out of classrooms and I called Oscar to walk round to pick up Tallulah. As we were going round the corner I tuned in to what Oscar was saying. I thought he had been singing, but no. He was hollering:
Buggerhead!
Bugger HEAD
You are a BUGGERHEAD!
I asked him to stop swearing and reminded him that swearing was not allowed.
He looked at me very earnestly and said:
But mama. That boy was being horrible to Mole. So I just had to stand up and say to him: YOU ARE A BUGGERHEAD! Because he was hurting my friend.
I never realised before what a peculiarly aching sensation the mixture of pride, shame and amusement was.
The buggerhead thing made me laugh, because it is his entirely new invention. It reminded me so much of that sketch in Alan Partridge where he has the political debate. If you forward it to about eight minutes you’ll find it:
you, you, you…..buggering…..shit
No comments:
Post a Comment