“Right?”
The question in his voice almost made me snort. I had to let it go. “So, this kid in Josh’s class was picking on another kid…. Josh, tell him what happened.”
Josh sighed. “He was telling him he was a fa—” He stopped and shot me a look through the rearview mirror. What the fuck? Kids used the “F” word when they were ten? What decade was I living in? When I was his age, getting called “fart face” was about the biggest insult getting thrown around. “He was calling the other kid ugly names like Shrimp because he’s short, and making fun of his shoes because they weren’t Nikes—”
Oh hell. I hadn’t heard that part in the office.
“I told him to stop saying that stuff, but he wouldn’t. He started telling me… stuff.”
What kind of shit had he been telling Josh? And why did I suddenly have the urge to go kick some ten-year-old’s ass?
“He kept pushing and pushing me, and I told him to stop. But he started saying stuff about me and the other boy—”
I wasn’t just going to kick the kid’s ass, I was going to kick his mom’s ass too. And after I was done kicking his mom’s ass, I was going to kick his grandma’s ass to teach the whole family a lesson.
“He kept flicking me on the ear and my neck, stepped on my shoes, kicked me a bunch of times, so I punched him,” he ended simply while I was still thinking about maybe even hunting down an aunt or two of the little shit’s.
“Oh,” was Louie’s serious, thoughtful response.
I put off my plan for later, reminding myself I needed to be an adult for now. “So, the principal got mad at Josh for hitting him, even though he hadn’t been the one to start anything. I think it’s stupid he got in trouble even though the other kid was the one being an asshole—”
That had Lou giggling.
“Don’t tell your abuelita I said that. I’m not going to get mad at Josh for what he did, even though the principal doesn’t think it’s right. If you aren’t purposely trying to hurt other people—and you can hurt them with your words and your actions—and you’re trying to help someone or defend yourself against somebody who is trying to do something wrong to you, I’m not going to get mad. Just tell me. I’ll try to understand, but if I don’t, we can talk about it and you can tell me what happened. You should never pick a fight with someone for no reason though. Sometimes we all make bad choices, but we can try and learn from them, okay?”
“I don’t make bad choices,” Lou argued.
The fact that Josh and I both laughed at the same time didn’t go unnoticed by the youngest person in the car.
“What?” the five-year-old argued.
“You don’t make bad choices.” I laughed and reached back with my palm up; Josh smacked it. “I told you not to stick foil in the microwave like a dozen times and you still did it and broke it!”
Josh slapped his palm into mine again. “Ding-dong, remember that time you said you really had to poop and we told you to go use the bathroom—”
“Be quiet!” Lou shouted. I didn’t need to look to know his face was turning red.
“—but you didn’t, and you pooped in your underwear?” Josh continued, laughing his ass off.
“It was an accident!”
My shoulders were shaking, and it was only because I was driving that I didn’t fall apart on the steering wheel while remembering Louie’s sharting accident last month. “It was an accident, and you learned to quit prairie dogging it, didn’t you? So see? You learned your lesson about making bad choices when it comes to poop.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, sounding so defeated it only made me laugh more.
“And that’s what matters.” I snorted just as I pulled the car into the driveway to our house. “You just had to shit your shorts to learn your lesson.”
“Tia!”
There were tears in my eyes as I got out of the car, holding my stomach from how hard I was laughing. Once the boys were out too and we were walking toward the front door, I pulled on a strand of Louie’s hair so he would know we were only messing with him. “It isn’t that hot today. You want to play some catch?” That principal could suck a big ding-dong if he thought I was going to punish Josh for what he’d done. In the back of my head, I realized that my parents and the Larsens probably wouldn’t agree with my glorifying his choices, but they could make all the faces and comments they wanted. I was proud of my kid.
“Can we play tag too?” Lou asked.
An Alka-Seltzer, Gatorade, a Coke, and a lot of water had dulled the sharpest edge of my hangover the day before, but if I was being completely honest with myself, not playing something my five-year-old wanted all because I’d had too much to drink made me feel awfully guilty. I could throw up in the bushes later if it came down to it, I guessed. “Sure.”
“And can I ride my skateboard after?”
“Yeah you can.”
“Have you found me a new team?” Josh asked with hopeful hesitation in his voice.
Fuck. I kept forgetting. “Not yet, J, but I will. Cross my heart. I really will find you one.” We had already talked about how it would more than likely take a couple of months to find Josh a new Select baseball team to play for, and to give him credit, he hadn’t been hounding me about it even though we were coming up to the two-month mark since we had talked about it. But I knew how important baseball was to him. Luckily, in the meantime, Mr. Larsen had been taking him to practice with his catching coach and batting coach.
Five years ago, I had no idea there was even a thing called a catching coach or someone who just worked on batting skills. Literally, he was a coach that worked with Josh to perfect his skills as a catcher and another to correct and improve his batting. I’m not sure what I had thought about baseball before that, but I sure as hell didn’t realize how much work went into it, much less how competitive and cutthroat it could be before boys even hit puberty. There was none of that fun, fair, positive crap going on with the kinds of teams Josh played on. They played to win. If it didn’t make Josh so happy, I would have been fine with him doing something else with his free time.
A few minutes after getting home, we had all changed into nonschool and work clothes and had made our way to the backyard with Mac, who was beyond stoked to have us all home. I eyed Louie’s outfit for a second and kept my comment to myself. The red Spiderman pajama pants and purple collared shirt my mom had bought him at some point didn’t match. At all. But I didn’t say a word. He could wear whatever he wanted to wear. I caught Josh side-eyeing him, but he didn’t tell him anything either. We both just let that boy live his life in mismatched clothing.