A Low Spot

There are many, many boys in my son's Kindergarten class. All of them full of snails and puppy dog tails and mischievious looks as they shoot bad guys with their fingers and spray spittle around the room.

My son, as I may have mentioned before, is the shortest in the class. He had a rough beginning at the start of the year. He has my temper but not the three decades of anger managment work under his belt. (Well, almost three decades.)

Yesterday he was supposed to go to a playdate with another boy in his class. He'd never been to this boy's house. I just met his mom for the first time last week on the day the two boys decided they liked to hang out. She seemed ok, so we said that Thursday my son would go over to their house. There are three brothers all together and I thought that perhaps my son would enjoy the rough and tumble afternoon. He'd probably come back with a war wound, but it'd be a long way from his heart, I'm sure.

But yesterday, Thursday, came and went and I just sort of forgot. I remembered half-way through the day but I figured my son had forgotten and there was a little boy here I was watching for the day, and, well, I just didn't think about it. My mom picked up my son and brought him home and he didn't remember it at all.

Except I found out today that the other boy did. He asked over and over when my son was coming.

I found out today that this other little boy has been having trouble in school. Suddenly his friends don't want to be friends with him. Suddenly they push him away and say "we don't want to play with you". And apparently his teacher (not my son's teacher) isn't much help.

She said sometimes he comes home from school and cries. He doesn't want to cry at school, even though it would bring attention to his distress. The teacher just doesn't believe that he's gone from the popular kid to the outcast, it seems (there are always many sides).

But where my son wears his feelings right out there on his sleeve, this little boy keeps them hidden in his pocket.

I feel horrible. I can only imagine that this poor guy felt rejected when we didn't show up, with no explanation. In my defense, I couldn't find his mom's number, but I could have looked harder. I found it today.

I asked my son to go say sorry to his friend and to promise that we'd get together next week. I need to fix this.