I knew the day would one day come when one of my children would take note of the graffiti scratched into bathroom stall walls or on park equipment or on the top of a turtle’s shell and yesterday seemed as good a day as any to discover such literature.
The day when we arrived 45 minutes early for our first session of basketball which is better than two hours late given we were never told a firm start time and the last two emails I received a response to addressed me as both Leah then Tina, so I wasn’t holding my breath for anyone with a basketball to show up at all.
Hanna climbed to the top of the equipment at the park where we killed some time and stopped to review something that caught her eye.
This was it. She was reading something I could only assume was written by a child and was likely riddled with grammatical and spelling mistakes but with a hilarious-to-a-child, hurtful tone. I was right.
Hanna: Jess Cherry is a nobody.
Oh dear.
Hanna: Jess Cherry’s is a nobody? Who’s Jess Cherry….Cherries? Who’s Jess Cherries?
Long pause before I began my sad, unrehearsed speech about cruel kids, bullying and why aren’t we in a gym with a freakin’ basketball in our hands so I don’t have to deal with graffiti 101 today?
Hanna: There’s more. ‘Bullshit.’ ‘Jess Cherries is a nobody. Bullshit.’ Daddy! What’s BULLSHIT?
Shhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Echoed like a gym filled with bouncing bullshit basketballs throughout the empty park.
Greg: Hanna if I had said that word when I was a kid…..
In fairness, she doesn’t know the word so she can’t get in trouble for reading it aloud. If she had stopped and giggled or whispered it, I might then have assumed she knew it was a word she’s not meant to repeat however, “What’s BULLSHIT?” rang through the two megaphones and nearly ruptured my eardrum. We were safe, this was her first introduction to the word but let’s get back to poor Jess Cherries.
We talked to the girls about how Jess must have felt reading her name scratched on top of the slide and how sad she must have been to know someone had called her a nobody. We gave Jess a moment of our time, a moment of silence while we picked stones out of our shoes and waited for the gym to open.
A sick feeling came over me wondering how I would feel if I was Jess’s Mom and had stumbled upon something so cruel written about my child.
We are all somebody. Off we went to begin our intense training but not before I climbed up to see if I could rub the nasty note off with one of my baby wipes.
“Jesus Christ is a nobody” was scratched pretty deeply into the plastic at the Catholic School yard’s park.
Bullshit.
