Marbles

Originally written September 7, 2007

Well, today something happened that I never dreamed in my entire life. AJ got in trouble for dumping marbles on the floor during kindergarten. And when I say dumping marbles, I don't mean ones he found in a tin in the classroom. Oh, no. I mean ones he that smuggled out the door in his socks. I swear. How I did not notice three small bulges next to his ankle?

...Anyway, I knew it was not good when his teacher accompanied him to the car in the carpool line. He looked cool as ever, but she had a strange look--not mad, more or less concealed amusement. I rolled the window down in my disasterously messy from the recent move vehicle and smiled. She held out her hand and showed me three marbles, two blue and one green. She said that there was only a small problem today with my son, when he spilled the marbles from his sock in class. Not once. Nope. Twice. Apparently she followed her protocol and gave him one warning before taking the small balls away. Of course A.J. does what he always does and waits a little while before repeating the offense. He likes to know if you're being consistent or not. She is. I got them back after school. He talked her into giving them to me, by telling her that they belonged to me. How very creative. I'm impressed. He's showing such affinity towards his papa. And what does Papa have to say? Aaron was snickering for the rest of the phone call. Probably still is. How do you get mad at that? It's too damn funny, and oh, so original. This doesn't happen everyday, but it does when you have the honor of being AJ's mom. He seemed minorly worried; he was more excited about showing me his artwork he'd made that day. I just told him no more marbles at school and left it at that. That's my kid.