Dad, Freedom Taker

Perhaps you know me--I am a bit anti-authoritarian.  In second grade I told my teacher, an obese and cruel nun, that I would not pick up her chalk that she dropped.  She had made it something of a lesson in manners, that the kids in the front of the class would scurry to pick up her things for her, but to me, it smacked of forced decency.  It also seemed like she was doing it on purpose, to test us.  And so, even at age 6 I was not having any of it and I told her something along lines of "Pick up yourself, Jabba."  After that Nanna and P-Pa had a weekly Tuesday meeting with Sister Barbara Jean.  I am sure she thought I would grow up to a psychopath or a thug.  She pegged me wrong.  After 12 years serving the poor as a public defender, I think I have met whatever notions of manners and charity she had in her head, just not the way she wanted me to.  Like I said, anti-authoritarian.

Well, apparently it is genetic.  On Thursday I spaced it and let Isaac take a kaiju in to school.  These snarling monsters are not only a bit intense for kindergarten they are also quite hard to stuff into a backpack.  But he managed.  When he got home Bianca unpacked his bag and found out that I had spaced it.  Friday morning was a chore.  

Isaac wanted to take the kaiju back to school and he had arguments aplenty as to why.  He promised that he would only play with it at play time and that he would make sure it didn't get broken or damaged.  He showed me, in a rather unconvincing way, "how easy it stuffs" in his bag.  He explained that they weren't too scary for the boys because all of them saw Force Awakens and the Dad dies in that movie, which is "ways scarier" than a kaiju (see that, he pulled on the heartstrings AND made an argument about scary they were).  When none of this worked he resorted to being stubborn, but not too stubborn (because he is a good kid).  As he was sulkily putting his shoes on he had had enough and told: "Your not my buddy anymore."  I replied that I was his parent first and buddy second and that sometimes parents have to do things that kids don't like.  Then he hurled an arrow too painful for me to take--"You are a freedom taker."  He launched into a Marx-worthy dissertation on how I was oppressing him by not letting him bring in his kaiju.

In the end he made it to school and forgot about the freedom taker line, but I surely won't.