Two Sides To Every Coin

There is a mom in our school that another friend and I like to jest about. It is nothing very mean..........this mom is just somewhat specific about how she likes her children to be raised............who seems to like to keep her kids surrounded by certain types of people (meaning smarties).........who has a very high academic bar for them to achieve towards......and who has made comments about my son to her very young daughter - which honestly is what started my joking with this other mom -

Really quick here is the back story........we are at a school Young Authors event - both SuperStar and Spidey have written books so they are both there. My kids have spent much time with this mom and her family over the past few years. So she is quite familiar with my kids and truthfully I would have not been offended AT ALL had this come from her own mouth to me......but it didn't. Her daughter, who was 4 at the time, approached me. I love this kid - too cute for words and smart as a whip (whatever that means). She comes up, I hug her, she hugs me, and then she looks up and says, "My mom says Spidey is a rude boy." and off she trotted.....leaving me there with my mouth open - half giggling and half wondering "what the heck?"

I wander to another friend and without mentioning names ask her what she would have done.......she just wanted to know who it was. Never told her. She had not good suggestions (if you are reading my dear....you had no good suggestions). Then a few months later I said something without thinking about it while with this second friend that gave away who that mom was. And we giggled because she had similar experiences. And we afterward made fun of EACH OTHER and how we would fall short of this persons expectations as a parent.......which also kinda made fun of the person directly. Bad Us.

Then last week SuperStar told me about something at school. SuperStar remembered that they had not passed out the BooGrams her class purchased for one another. She was disappointed because she can't WAIT to see how many she got. Remember BooGrams? They were like a status symbol in a way - a popularity measurement. If you didn't get one then it meant that no one was thinking about you as special. That can really hurt a kid. I remember. In fact I buy one for each of my kids each time something like this comes up just to make sure they get one. SuperStar and I reasoned that the next week they would hand out the BooGrams. And then she told me about how The Specific Mom had come in the day before they were supposed to be handed out. She had asked to purchase a BooGram for every child in both her children's grades that DID NOT already have one purchased for them. She wanted to make certain that every child in Kindergarten and 5th grade were treated to the feeling that someone thought they were special.

I had only thought to do it for my own kids. She had thought to do it for EVERY kid. She Rocks.

I forgot to look at both sides of her coin and just bothered to look at one.