I’ll be brief today, as I have some stuff that I need to get done. Time is of the essence this week because of a variety of appointments I must keep. Yowza.

Yesterday Matilda fell on the playground. She has one hell of a shiner. It was puffy last night, but this morning it was it was nearly swollen shut and purple. She thinks it looks tough. Though, she was a little wary about heading off to school this morning out of embarrassment. So, I taught her the O’Brien deflection. When you don’t want to say what happened, you deflect.

“Dude, what happened to your eye?”

”Well, I was in the middle of a grind trying to convert into a Japan Air and a Madonna, but I ended up doing a face plant.”

OR

“You want to know? You REALLY want to know?”

OR

“Ninja training.”

Sure, she could be honest. Sure, I could teach her that being honest is the best policy . . . but, it’s more fun to mess with people. Yay!

I realized at the bus stop this morning that the other parents could, quite possibly, think that I did that to her. That she didn’t make her bed properly and I clocked her one to show her who’s boss.

Anyone who knows me should know that this isn’t possible. I wouldn’t harm a hair on the heads of my kids. I cry when I crab at them in the mornings. I would never lay a finger on these kids.

And yet, in our society, no one knows. You can never be sure. Neighbors don’t know who you are anymore. Neighbors don’t know if they can trust you. They don’t know what’s going on behind your doors. We live in a world of electronic social hermits.

But things like this pain me. Kids in pain pain me. For example, yesterday a little girl came running out of her door to go to the bus. She slipped on a patch of snow and turned around to see her mom. To get a little bit of comfort from her mom’s sympathetic look. But she had already closed the door. Mom didn’t see. And the look on that little girl’s face was heart breaking.

Simply heartbreaking.