Tag Archives: discipline

Wookie shavy pet-y

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“What do you get a Wookie for Christmas when he already has a comb?”

My 6:50 a.m. musical extravaganza. Noah is singing at full volume. I guess it’s so he can hear himself over the tumult of his peeing.

I’m in bed, behind my closed door and the combined noises still fill the room like an absurd symphony. I fight back the urge to open the door and shush him. I don’t want to start the day with him that way.

Last night at bedtime it turned into me shouting and him going dumb and sullen.

I totally mishandled a perfectly reasonable position. How often that seems to happen. I’m doing the right thing but I say it the wrong way. And one wrong word leads to another and finally I’m angry and incompetent.

Damn!

It was past eight thirty and I had already insisted several times that he get to bed. I kept myself busy with dishes and things to avoid confrontation. When I left the kitchen, I found him standing at the mirror, holding a boomerang and posing like some outback icon.

“Noah, did you brush your teeth?”

“Uh, no.”

“Clean out your nose with the spray?”

“No…”

“Feed your fish?”

Now he just shakes his head. I look him over. He’s still fully dressed, not in pajamas, except for one sock missing.

“Noah…”

The whole thing is so ridiculous, I should just laugh and tell him to move it and move on myself.

“…geez, Noah, get moving.”

He cleans his teeth with his boomerang. Finds it supremely boring. I take the bait and turn into a cartoon. Steam comes out of my ears, my eyes bulge, my tongue rolls in and out of my face.

Noah keeps picking his teeth.

“@$?&$!(@*&@+??%$3&…..”

…is my totally appropriate response.

Noah just stares and still doesn’t move.

“You do this almost every night, Noah. You wait until I blow up and then we end the night angry at each other. Not cool.”

“There was a spider in my room.”

It ends badly.

He’s sent to bed with a set of punishments, loss of computer time and other restraints on his pleasure. He falls sleep feeling like shit. I twist internally, feeling guilty and insulted and incompetent.

So this morning….

The alarm goes off.

“Noah…..” I call him from my bed.

He steps out of the bathroom.

“Hi dad.”

“Jump into bed with me, I feel like a hug.”

He charges in, wraps himself up in my comforter. I snuggle up to him.

“What was that you were singing?”

“What do you get a Wookie for Christmas when he already has a comb?”

“Yeah, that.”

“It’s one of the uh, Christmas songs we’re practicing for the show, yeah, you know the show we do every Christmas at school? Yeah.”

“Funny song.”

“Yeah….”

He starts singing.

“…He doesn’t need a tie clip, he doesn’t need shaving foam….”

“Damn! I was about to say, give him shaving cream.”

“Nope.”

Noah stretches and smiles. Light up my morning. I grab him for a last snuggle.

“Ouch dad, you squeezed where I have my wound.”

He bruised up his arm during the weekend.

“Look, it still shows.”

He points to a scab and a few bruises on his forearm.

“When I like showed my friends at school, they were all like this ‘oh wow, that must hurt, oh poor you’. Yeah, they were like all ‘pet-y‘.”

“You mean they pet you like a dog?”

“Exactly.”

I look at him. He’s pleased. Why not?

I pet his head.

“Poor doggie.”

He suddenly licks my hand.

“Oh you little…”

I jump him. He yelps. We get lost in tickles and giggles.

R.E.S.PE.C.T.

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“Dad, dad … .” 

As I step into the after school daycare, Noah runs at me.

“Dad, I got a gold star.”

“Really?”

The day care lady nods and gives me an impressed look.

“Yeah, Miss Anita gave it to me. Because like it’s the end of the month and uhm at the end of the month, like this was for the first month, yeah, so what month did we just finish, dad?”

“September.”

“Yeah, so for September, I’m the one that got the star, you know.”

“Great, Noah, good going. But what was it for?”

He’s been acing everything since the start of the school year, so I’m fully expecting it to be for academic performance in French or English or Math….

“Respect, dad.”

“Huhn?”

It’s because I’m a writer that I’m so articulate.

“Yeah, dad. I got a gold star because I was like the one, the student like in all grade 4 that was the most in respect.”

“You mean the most respectful?”

“Yeah, full of respect, that’s me.”

A sparkle in his eye, a smile worthy of a tooth-whitening commercial. The boy is proud.

I’m shocked.

Not because he’s not a sweet, courteous kid. But because he rarely is that, at school. Discipline, staying still, listening, not clowning, Tough. The last year was all about helping him to respect the rules, the work to be done, others’ space. Daily exchanges of evaluations and strategies with his teacher, progress reports, rewards and loss of privileges etc.

It all seemed to have a very temporary effect.

“Are you telling me that, of all the Grade 4 students, you are the one who showed the most respect the whole month of September?”

“Yeah.” He looks at me with anticipation.

“The month of September which is the toughest month because it’s the first one and all the kids are still in summer party mode?”

“Uh, yeah !?!”

He’s gone a little still.

Suspense. A writer’s major weapon. Even bad writers.

The daycare lady has stopped listening to the lament of a skirt tugging six year old, to tend her ear in our direction.

I drop down on one of the pint sized stools. Stare at Noah. He’s totally in my power.

“Wow,” I say simply.

“I know, right dad? So cool, huhn?”

“Sushi-cool.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’ve gotta celebrate with a crazy, gut busting, massive sushi party.”

“I loooooooovvvveeee sushi.”

He closes his eyes and throws his head back in delight.

The daycare lady breaks into a grin and turns her attention to the whiny skirt-puller at her feet.

“Oh, and dad? I did all my homework.”

The daycare lady nods in confirmation.

“Great, so tonight after we fill up on sushi, you can go on your DS and blast a few virtual enemies.”

“But dad, it’s Monday. Wednesday is like my Nintendo night.”

“I tell you, kid tonight is special. You earned it.”

“Really?”

It absolutely slays me when he’s so surprised that I praise him. As if he somehow can’t believe he’s a good kid.

But he holds doors open for strangers, apologizes when he bumps into somebody ad even runs to help old ladies, mothers with babies, smaller kids.

He is a bloody GREAT kid!

“You know, kid, what is sweet is that they’re finally seeing who you really are? And you’re a really really really really great kid.”

I’m overwhelmed by a wave of emotion as he hugs me on my baby stool.

“Thanks dad, you’re great too!”

“Come on let’s get out of here and get our party going.”

“Okay dad.”

I’m about to break into song and do a crazy dance. I know if we’re outside Noah will join in.

I feel like doing the old standard R.E.S.P.C.T but Gangnam style….

Oh yeah!

 

Monster management

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“What are you doing up, dad?”

He squints at me through barely open eyes. His whole body is striated with long, slashing red welts, transfer marks from his deep abandon to his sheets and pillow. He looks like he’s been marked up by a butcher. Here is the tenderloin, there is the filet-mignon…

“We need to get to your day camp an hour earlier, remember?”

He’s horrified.

‘What for?”

It is six in the morning, so I know about liquefied brains.

“Noah,  you’re going to the Super Splash Aqua Club today.”

He nods. “Oh, and it’s called Aqua Splash not, not, well whatever you said.” He disappears into the bathroom.

He can’t remember why he’s up, but he certainly remembers to correct me. What is it with kids. They invariably turn into the most supercilious, punctilious reproachful monsters. Surfing on the wave of their parents’ tsunami efforts to raise them, they just gratuitously treat them like flotsam. And then they go, “whaaa, what did I say, what did I do?” when you point it out to them.

I hear a  healthy stream of pee strike the toilet. Perhaps an empty bladder will free his better instincts. Of course, I don’t hear him feeding the cat. Though it’s his job, I say nothing.

I hope to get through the morning without dissonance.

He shuffles into the room and drops onto the futon. Before he even lands his hand is groping for the TV remote. Brainless but media coordinated. He sinks into the cushions, the TV snaps on with a roar and Noah expels irritable exhaustion.

“Oh my god!”

I smile, rub his back gently, like a mom would (oh yeah, I do that).

“Tired Noah?”

“No.” Despite lying down he succeeds in shrugging his shoulders contemptuously.

I sip my coffee and resist the urge to strangle him. The TV hollers even louder as it switches to commercials. An advertisement for super plush slippers that bark or wink or squeak when you walk.

Slay me!

I throw significant looks at Noah. He knows to mute the bloody commercials. Yet he plays dumb. The TV barks and little girls giggle in rehearsed pleasure at the wonder of plush.

I could tell him, again, but then he would mute in super slow motion to antagonize me. I know it. I could just turn off the damn set and throw Mozart on the sound system. Apparently it makes kids smarter.

But, conflict management, imposing discipline and respect requires more energy than I’ve got. So I get up and head out of the room.

Noah raises up on an elbow.

“Where are you going?”

None of your f….ing business. He sounds like my Mother at her worst.

Can’t hear you. The TV is too f…ing loud. No, I don’t say any of that. I stay on the reservation

“Gotta go make your lunch. We need to be out the door at 7.”

He glances at his watch. Now he’s going to crunch the numbers to probably tell me that I calculated the departure time all wrong. I rush to the kitchen.

Fry a little steak to slap between two slices of bread. Rummage for fruit and veggies in the fridge.

“Dad?”

He starts talking at me from the other room. Loudly, to be heard over the blaring TV,

But I’ve got a strategy. I turn on the water.

“Can’t hear you, Noah. Cooking food for you.”

I’m counting on him being too fat-assed today to get up and come to the kitchen.  Figuratively speaking, given that he has a scrawny butt.

I sizzle, chop, wrap, package, throw in some carrots, cheese sticks, an applesauce squeezable tube and, tadah!, his lunch is ready. And it’s a damn good one…tasty, with all food groups represented.

And my calculation was spot on… fat-ass hasn’t moved, too taken by his slothfulness to even eat the pastry and glass of milk that I left within reach.

“Countdown to take off, Noah. Ten minutes.”

I head to the bathroom to empty what needs to.

“Dad, about the like, time…”

“Sorry, Noah, I’m peeing, I can’t hear you.”

Then I run the water to wash my face, brush my teeth…and to block my son’s long distance assaults.

By the time I re-emerge, he’s up and dressed and, remarkably, he’s finished breakfast.

Even more remarkably he’s silent.

And, most remarkable of all, by far?

I managed the monster on the futon and the monsters in my soul. And none of them ate my day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

use…

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…and misuse

I’m in love. Or it feels like love. A warm osmosis that makes my body relax and my heart want to give. I don’t see the object of my love, but it doesn’t matter. It feels good. I lie there, totally comfortable, in accepting arms. A benevolent presence cradle me.

Somewhere, water is cascading. A loud insistent sound. I look around. Ferns rustle in the wind. I move through them. The sound of water is louder. I must be close to a waterfall. The warmth is becoming worry. The love is becoming anxiety.

I close my eyes. I realize I’m dreaming. I try to recapture the beauty. But the insistent waterfall has become a stream of urine … Noah’s noisy shattering of my nighttime fantasies.

I curl up in bed, in a last effort to sink back into the arms of wonder.

The door blasts open.

“Dad, dad, my head really hurts…a lot.”

I crank my eyes open. He’s clutching his little nut head.

5:59 a.m. on the cell phone by the bed.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

Typical kiddie precision.

“Here?”  I touch his neck and back of the head.

“Or here….?” I caress his forehead and cheeks.

He burrows his head into my chest. I’m still lying in bed.

“There, dad…really hurts there.”

Sinus headache…easy to deal with it.

Half an hour, a cold compress, a glass of milk with cookies and he’s feeling startlingly well.

I’m now heavy with an odd foreboding. Free floating anxiety, as opposed to my nighttime free floating peace.

Eh!

“Dad, it really sucks. Like you took a meeting with my teacher, yeah, you know, for the report card. Yeah, at the time you took it,  none of my friends are at the same time. Sucks. Because last year we were all there at the same time and we ran around everywhere, so cool.”

“Geez, Noah, really?”

“What?”

“I’m meeting your teacher because you have not been doing well in class and we want to help you do better. You’re only concerned about how you can’t run wild. Do you see the problem?”

He’s doing that frowning, ‘I’m shutting down’ look that drives me nuts.

“Yeah.”

“So what is the problem?”

Now he’s scowling.

“That I don’t listen and I do what I want and I should focus on doing the right thing instead of running wild.”

“Exactly!”

I’m less and less effective. It seems now that every school day is filled with conflict and misbehavior. He knows what to do and doesn’t do it.

And I’m beginning to wear down, both him and me. The gears of my reasoning with him are losing teeth.

We’re both used. And he’s learning to withdraw when I try to show him the better road.

His look tells me he’s heard it all before. Already. And he’s not nine yet.

The rest of the morning he’s quiet. Moves efficiently without my having to push him. On the short walk to the bus stop, he says nothing.

The big yellow submarine pulls up almost immediately. I lean down and grab him for a hug and a kiss.

“I love you, Noah. I just want you to be happy. Have a good day.”

“You too dad.”

From behind the bus window he waves at me with a lackluster smile.

Shit.

I’m hit by a snowflake. I look up. The first snowfall? In November.

Now I’ve got to dig out his boots, see if they fit.

The snow stops just as suddenly. A warning sign.

Find the boots now.

Help him learn now.

Later, in the middle of the storm, it’ll be tougher, much tougher.

 

 

 

listen…

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…and just do it.

“No.”

“But I hate arts and crafts, dad.”

“You’re setting yourself up to have a lousy day and you’re setting me up to get notes from your teacher, ‘Noah didn’t listen,’ ‘Noah went bonkers and bothered everybody’, so on and so forth.”

“Yeah, but I reaaaalllyy hate arts and crafts. A whole day of cutting and gluing and ahhhhhhh, even worse, coloring. Can’t you like spend the day with me? Please?”

Work the guilt strings, Noah. Very resonant. They sing so beautifully.

He has a pedagogical day. No school, but a day of activities at daycare. Sometimes its fun… movie outings, museum visits, gaming centers. Sometimes it isn’t.

“Noah, I can’t take a day off. Already it’s tough because I lose hours with all sorts of stuff like dentists and teacher meetings. Next Friday, I’ve got to work.”

“Awwwwww.”

Aaaahhhhhh.

I have to work to motivate myself to have the strength to motivate myself to do crap I don’t feel like doing but which has enormous implications if I don’t do right.

Like spending a day at the rental board fighting to get my landlady to repair a leaky roof, a rotting balcony and thermostats that short out. And the nasty woman is suing me for invented slights, to frighten me into leaving.

I fight down the urge to scream at him.

“Noah, I can’t. I would love to, but I really can’t. And you have to help me.”

“How help you, dad?”

“Yeah. You’ve got to be positive and not get all worked up to make yourself miserable. If you keep saying I hate this, I hate this, then you’ll blow a gasket and we’ll all suffer nasty feelings.”

“But, dad…”

“But, Noah, don’t. Just listen and do it. Your only choice is doing it badly or doing it well.”

“Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff…..” .

He expels a climate changing amount of hot air. Fascinating contribution to my mounting urge to rant and rave and throw a tantrum.

Try to ignore it, I tell myself.

He pulls his neck warmer up over his face. To punish me, to pout. Exactly what drives me nuts.

Try to ignore it, I tell myself again.

“Pfffffaaaaaawwwww.” Now compressed air and laments from behind the mask.

Man, if I was married to the kid, it would be time to file divorce papers.

Try to ignore it, I tell myself again and again. I breathe and expel noisily, to calm myself.

One eye peeks out from the neck warmer.

Despite my growing rage, I can’t help chuckling.

He quickly hides his own amusement. Can’t possibly let the situation become o.k. He must maintain punishment on his recalcitrant parent.

Thankfully, the school bus pulls up before we enter the next round.

I give him a quick hug and kiss. He waves perfunctorily from the window.

I turn and drag my exhausted ass to the starting line of the rest of the day.

Ready, set, ….

 

 

Mmmm…

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…mmm

Today was a Perfect day! signed Mr. Aaron. 

When I pick up Noah at the end of the school day he has a ‘cat ate the bird’ look. The same look that Sylvester the Cat has in the rare instances when he’s swallowed Tweety Bird. Generally, it is just a moment before something terrible happens to him.

Hard to know if Noah has good news or bad news. He has been getting in trouble in school lately, so it’s always a toss up.

Noah is holding something back. We begin the walk home. He’s hopping with trepidation.  Half a block later, he stops suddenly.

“Dad, dad, I absolutely have to show you something.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“School related?”

“Yes.”

He drops his bag in the middle of the sidewalk. The rush hour tide splits around us.

“Noah, I prefer getting home first so we can look at stuff properly.”

“Dad, dad, I gotta show you.”

All I see for the moment are papers and notebooks and pencil cases about to explode on the sidewalk. I look for a refuge and spot a park bench that has not yet been removed in the city’s undeclared war against loiterers, like me.

“Come.”

I grab Noah by the collar and drag him and his bag to the bench.

He’s hardly noticed, so engrossed is he in his mission. His toque is askew, his sweater and his coat are open and flapping in the wind. Sometimes he looks so small, like a fevered mite struggling for space.

I sit on the bench beside his bag, Now I’m at his height. He hands me  a sheet of paper.

It’s his Daily Progress Report instituted by his teacher (see post: No Passaran!). It chronicles his efforts on a number of dimensions like listening, working, respecting…M is for doing the right thing Most or all of the time, P for Part of the time.

He’s been getting lots of P’s and a rare M. And the occasional detention.

I unfold the paper, fully expecting Tweety Bird to flutter in my face.

I see M’s everywhere. Every dimension, and there are eight on the report.

I look up at Noah. He’s wide-eyed, expectant. His mouth, filled with a charmingly crooked mix of baby and adult teeth, is stretched in the widest of smiles.

“All M’s !?!”

“Yeeeeeeessssssssss.” So loud that for a fraction of a moment the whole city seems to go quiet to pay attention.

“And look at what he wrote, here, look, here, dad.”

His rainbow stained fingers, colored by the day’s arts class, poke at the paper.

A handwritten note.

What a pleasure to learn with Noah, today.

I look at Noah. He’s nodding, bobble-headed with an adrenaline rush.

Today was a Perfect day! signed Mr. Aaron.

“Wow, Noah.”

“A perfect day, Dad!” Excited disbelief.

“And how does it feel?”

“Grrrreeeaaaaaaaattttttttttttt !!!!” My lion cub roars.

I hug him. Just the right height.

“How did you do it?”

“I did like you told me. On the bus, like, this is what I did. I told myself over and over. M’s I want M’s, only M’s I hate P’s, No excuses , No limits, Only M’s. I went like that all the way to homeroom. Man, dude… sorry, dad, I was sooooo concentrated. My brain was like phoooosssshhhh! a laser. Cool huh dad?”

“Hyper-super-mega-giga-maxi-cool.”

“Hah.”

He’s dancing on the spot. I feel like Ginger Rogers to his Gene Kelly.

A perfect day. A challenge to all the days to come.

 

Dark like…

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…a witch’s butt crack

“Dad, it’s the middle of the night. Why are you up.”

“I had to pee.”

“Daddy, you should go back to bed.”

Amusing role reversal.

“It’s 6h30, Noah, time to get up soon anyways.”

“But it’s so black. Look, dad, there’s no like you know, sunrise or anything like light in the widows. Freaky.”

“Winters coming, the days are shortening.”

“Imagine, dad, how freaky cool it would be if, yeah, we would go out when its dark and everything is open. All the stores and things are open and we go to learn at school, but at night.”

“Would be weird.”

“Yeah, but cool.”

As I warm his glass of milk, he stares down his breakfast pastry. He takes a mouth-filling bite and stares at it again.

He splutters a few flakes as he talks.

“And imagine, dad, La Ronde, yeah with you know like the ferris wheel but ooouuuhhh, nobody is on it….yeah and the like game, uh, uh, …”

“…stands…”

“…yeah, there’s nobody at the game stands but its all moving. Like ghostly like.”

He licks his fingers. Master of his pastry.

“And like, yeah, there’s a freaky park where the round thing is turning and the swings are swinging and its night and noooooooo one is theeeeerrreee. But something freaky scary is about to happen. AAAaaaaaaaaahhhhh.”

The sun is slowly rising but with little effect. It is really a very dark morning. The first after Noah’s one-day suspension from Grade Three.

Climatic commentary on my state of mind?

Aaaaaaarrrrggghhhh! I need to understand why he disrupts his class, why he doesn’t follow instructions, why he can’t sit more than a few minutes at a task without going wild.

“Feels halloweeny, eh dad?”

“Yup.”

“Dad, is there something wrong in my head?”

Love the way this kid just sucker punches in the balls at the most unexpected moment.

“Why do you say that?”

“You know, because I’m like a bad pear at school.”

My little frenchified pseudo-anglo mixes his colloquialisms.

“Noah, you’re brilliant. To quote your progress report, ‘Noah performs to a very high standard…”

“..when he wants to.”

“When you focus. Plus you sing on key, play the piano instinctively and you draw like you were born with a pencil in your hand. You’re smart and full of talents.”

“Really?”

“You know that.”

“I forgot.”

“Come on, time to get dressed for school.”

“Oh, yeah…it’s still super dark.”

He drops pyjama pants and underwear and runs naked to his room. He proceeds to holler. Poor neighbours.

“Daaaaddddd….I forgot, tomorrow is aaawwwweessssommmme. You know why.”

“Don’t scream Noah, I can hear you.”

“OK”  just as loudly.

“Tomorrow, there’s a show by this kid or not really a kid. I think he’s like old like a young man. Yeah, we learned about him in hip hop class. Yeah, he’s coming to our school. There’s something wrong with his legs. Like he was born like that. His legs are all small and weak. And he does breakdance and does spins and everything but with crutches. Sooooo cooooll. We saw a video of him. He’s called Luca Lazylegz. And he’s Italian like me.”

Noah may have something wrong with his head.

His Mother does, navigating on the other side of the ocean between the wonderful lands of Schizophrenia, Psychosis and Paranoia. And I am certainly “particular”, to be charitable with myself.

But I have no doubt that whatever is going on with him, we will solve and he will be fine.

Like Luca Lazylegz.

Even if today is as dark as a witch’s butt crack.

accidental…

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…rebel

“He did what?”

“He spit on his Science teacher.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes.”

I’m shocked but strangely not surprised. Noah is argumentative, contradictory, hard headed and unwilling to bend to authority …sometimes.

Noah’ s principal is harsh, unsympathetic and strict … sometimes.

But, I know Noah is a good kid , empathetic, loving, emotional, sensitive…. sometimes.

“What does he say happened?”

“He says it was an accident.”

“You can’t spit by accident.”

Of course, as soon as I say it I know it to be only partially true.

“He probably meant that he didn’t intend to spit. He was spitting angry and it came out.”

The principal looks at me as if she now understands the source of his bad behavior. A withering look.

I wither.

Noah got into an argument with his Science teacher because she was going to put a bad note in his agenda. A bad note which he then would have had to explain to me with the obligatory speech and consequences.

He thought it was unfair, argued with her and became spittingly angry. Literally.

He didn’t wither.

And he got suspended for a day.

When I went to get him at daycare he was shaking with tension and fear. Enormous cinematic tears rolled down his cheeks, unheeded.  When I spoke to him, his voice was weak and he was unable to form full sentences.

My kid is afraid of my opinion. Afraid to lose my love?

Later, at home, we spoke. I was quiet. His chin vibrated with the effort to keep from breaking down and sobbing.

Eventually, he lost the battle with his grief.  I held him until it subsided.   My Mother died recently, I remembered that she was also his Nonna.

Grief.

“I feel like a mass murderer dad.”

“You made a mistake, Noah. Everybody makes mistakes. What’s important, now?”

“To not do it again?”

“Yes, to learn. Anger is an emotion that can lead to scary consequences if you don’t express it at the right time, in the right way and for the right reasons.”

Bloody Hallmark phrases.

The  channels of the mind are obscure. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to manage my rage, my despair, my occasional joy. And trying to act appropriately.

Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But I always learn something. And that’s the victory.

I’m a hedonist of being. Not a hedonist of having.

My boy does not wither when he’s confronted with opposition. When he feels dissed or when he feels its unfair.

Don’t kill that. Channel it. Plenty of real injustice to be fought in the world.

“Is your life unfair, Noah?”

“No.”

“Are the adults in your life, me, your teachers, your family are we unfair to you?”

“No.”

“Anger, Noah, can be very valuable. When you need to fight injustice. Real unfairness.”

“Like when you told off that guy who almost ran me over? Remember, dad?”

Yes, almost jumped on his back and ripped his head off.

Hmmm.

“Yes, I was defending your life… but I probably went too far in telling him off.

Ugh. The hardest is coming facing to face with what you excuse in yourself and refuse to accept in your kid.

“Don’t fight the people who care for you, Noah. Defend somebody weaker or fight for people you love.”

Hallmark. Hallmark.

“You’re a good kid, kid. Just act that way so the world will know who you really are.”

“Ok. dad.”

He wipes his nose on my sleeve.

My rebel looking for a cause.