We Didn't Talk

Had a kid go off this past week.

Normally, when a kid goes off and I have to deal with it, it’s at work. When this happens, it’s a sliding scale between, “I see you’re upset. Let’s take a break and step out of the classroom and you can breathe for a minute and maybe tell me what’s going on,” ...

... and “Everyone needs to clear the room for safety’s sake.”

This is what you get when you work with my sort of kids. Kids in general, as a rule, are all over the place when it comes to managing their feelings and their subsequent behaviors, sure. But I have a job because some kids are less good at it than others.

And it’s even weirder when the schools are closed and we’re all trying to hold classes and meetings online. Precisely what does one do when a kid starts yelling and throwing things in the privacy of his own bedroom? Up till now, I’d have told you that was not my problem. But now it is, and it’s a thing I have had to plan for.

But this past week, when the kid went off, I wasn’t there, and he wasn’t online. But Mom reached out to me and asked, “Can you speak with him? He’s upset, he’s angry, and I don’t think he really understands WHY, even. But he’s been weird for a couple DAYS now, and I’d like to see if SOMEONE can get to the bottom of this before he really goes off BIG, if you know what I mean.”

And so, I agreed to meet with the child. He in his bedroom wearing Fortnite pajamas, on his bed with a laptop, and me, miles away, wearing a nice polo shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, sitting at my workstation. Facetiming.

And we started off slow. I knew his favorite video games, and we started talking about what he’d been doing, and he asked if I’d built anything or painted anything interesting since “this whole thing got started,” and we compared notes on what we’d been up to. We talked about schoolwork, and I reexplained a concept that he was having trouble with in math.

And finally, out of the blue, he asked, “Are we having graduation this year?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why wouldn’t we? If I have to go to work and you have to go to school and we both have to do work, why wouldn’t it count? I get my paycheck, you get your grades, and it’s business as usual.” (Fortunately, the district had confirmed this earlier, meaning I didn’t have to talk through my hat or anything).

He paused. He looked thoughtful. “What’s wrong?” I said.

“I’m mad.”

“I can dig it. What about?”

And he started up. I’ve seen him wind himself up enough times that I could see it coming. It started with “I want to go outside and play with my friends,” and went from there to “I want to go to McDonalds and eat a bunch of chicken nuggets,” up to “I want an Easter basket and an egg hunt,” and “I want to go to the movies,” all the way up to “I want a party at the end of the year when I go to the next grade.”

“I can understand that.” I said.

“But that’s not IT!” he screamed.

I waited. And I sure hoped I was right about what I was thinking.

He started to cry. “I want to be MAD!”

“At who?”

“EVERYBODY!” he shouted. “AND I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M MAD AT EVERYBODY!”

And he proceeded to go on at quite some length (and volume) about being stuck in the house with nowhere near enough to do and how Fortnite wasn’t even any fun any more and Ricky lived two doors down, but he couldn’t go play with him, and McDonalds is only doing takeout and you can’t use the playplace, and what about his birthday and the end of the school year, and--

And I took a deep breath and hoped I was right. “Me too,” I said.

“Wait, what?” he said. “You don’t even LIKE McDonalds.”

“No, but I sure like El Guapo Frijole,” I said. “And I would dearly love to go down there and order the Muy Mas Macho plate with extra tortillas, and sit down with Mrs. Bedlam and eat a nice Mexican meal and tip the waitress because she kept my tea full.”

He nodded. Made sense to him.

“And I sure would like to go down to Resales R Us and see what they have in the way of used books,” I said. “Haven’t been there in a month, and I found some good stuff last time, some old Dungeons and Dragons books, super cheap.”

He raised an eyebrow. He knew about Dungeons and Dragons.

“And I hate to say it, but I’d sure like to go to work and see all my friends and all my kids and do my paperwork and set up some activities and have a stinkin’ NORMAL DAY for a change.”

He nodded. Emphatically.

“And there are days where I’m SICK of being indoors, and I don’t WANT to wear a mask when I go outside, and I WANT what I WANT, durnit, but I CAN’T because I CAN’T because of all this CRAP going on, and I get MAD and I sort of WANT to yell at Mrs. Bedlam, or even maybe at YOU because I’M MAD...”

He got very solemn. I hoped like hell I was right...

“...but yelling at YOU won’t do any good. It won’t make the restaurants reopen, it won’t open the book stores, it won’t open the schools or the theaters, and none of it’s YOUR fault ANYWAY, and I can yell at you till I lose my voice, and all it will do is make YOU feel BAD, and none of it IS EVEN YOUR FAULT!!!”

“THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!!!” Tears streamed down his face.

I was actually a little taken aback. When I first met this kid, he had trouble managing painful affective states, and when he got mad, he saw no problem whatsoever taking it out on whoever was handy at the clank of a falling molecule. And here he was dealing with the same load of crapola that we’ve ALL been dealing with these past several weeks, and rather than unloading on his family, he’d been bottling it all up inside.

Still not the best option, but a hell of a leap from where he’d been last time I saw him.

“.... and I want them to open McDonalds, but I know they can’t, and yelling isn’t going to do any good, and what about my birthday and the end of the school year and...”

“And I’d give about anything to go down to the Athenian and order a liver and onions plate and sit down and eat it, right there,” I replied.

“Ew,” he said. “Liver and onions? You’re gross.”

“Yeah, you said that the first time you met me,” I replied. “And yeah, I’m mad too. And I get depressed, too. And I want what I want, and I can’t have it any more than you can. But I CAN send you something for your birthday, and we can all do face time for your party, and I know for a fact that if you stay on top of your work, you’ll move on to the next grade, same as the rest of your class. And you’re really handling this way better than some grownups I know right now, you know that?”

“I didn’t realize grownups were as mad or upset or scared about this.”

“Oh, GHOD, yeah,” I said. “Just because grownups have a whole different set of things to be worried about -- even scared about -- doesn’t make the situation any different! Plenty of things for me to be worried about, scared about, and MAD about!”

“And yelling won’t make any difference.”

“Sure it will. We can make each other feel rotten.”

He actually grinned at that. I grinned too.

“Or we can yell at each other in a good way and get it out, blow off some steam, and do something worthwhile,” I said. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better,” he said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“You’d have yelled at me at school, and not felt better about it. At least this way, we get a positive conclusion. Feel better?”

Pause. “Yeah. A little.”

“Wanna play Zombie Dice?”

He grinned again.

_____________________________________________________

And this conversation never really happened. I can’t talk about my REAL kids that freely; it’d break some privacy laws. And, of course, I am nowhere near that on-target, and the conversations are never EVER really THAT pat.

But yeah, my kids are a bit off. We all are. Today makes a month since I’ve seen them, (3/13/20 was the last day I was at work) and some of them haven’t left their own yards in that long.

Take care of yourselves. Feel what you feel. And it’s okay to be scared. Or even angry. I’ve had plenty of weird days this past month. So have most of us. But we’ll get there.

Feel what you need to feel, and do what you need to do.

(Originally published April 2020. Fuck Facebook.)