What an afternoon

This afternoon turned positively exciting.

First, Kevin, my oldest, a sixth grader, informed me that a sixth grade girl brought alcohol to school today. Apparently, as the story goes, she did it on a dare. Apparently, several kids were helping her hide it (I guess it was a beer), but two kids decided to snitch on her to the vice principal. She has now been suspended. So the peer pressure talk ensued between Kevin and me. Right now he's at the point - and genuinely, I believe - that such things horrify him. I'm not foolish enough to think, however, that his feelings won't change over the next few years.

Whew. Sixth grade, and they're already doing stuff like that. Although, really, I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised; I wasn't much older when I started doing things like that. It really confirms my feeling that putting Kevin in a K - 8 school for middle school (i.e., a smaller school setting as opposed to traditional, stand alone junior high) was the best way to go. I think things like that are largely overlooked in larger school settings (unless things have drastically changed since I was in junior high). I think it's a little more difficult to get away with things in a smaller school setting.

~~~

Later, I was at Joey's school waiting for the buses that were bringing the first graders back from a field trip that ran late, so it was after normal school hours. I only had Finn with me, having dropped the girls and Kevin off at home, and I was standing out in front of the school with several other first grade parents who were also waiting for their children. A woman approached me. I recognized her as the mom of a former classmate of Kevin's as well as a former classmate of Joey's - last year her son was in the same class as Kevin, and one of her daughters was in Joey's kindergarten class. We don't know each other; we met and spoke once last year when I was pregnant, and I learned that she has 7 kids, so the fact that I was expecting my sixth gave us some common ground for a few minutes that one time.

So she approached me this afternoon and I said, "Oh, it's the other mom with a lot of kids! Hi!" We both laughed, and she asked me how old the baby is now, yada yada yada. Then, out of nowhere she says to me, "Do you go to church?" Fuck. I immediately felt defensive. What does that have to do with anything, and why do so many people think it's their business? "No," I told her, "It's just not my thing." She looked at me sadly - I'm serious - sadly! - and said, "Wow, what a hard job you have, raising all those kids without the Lord." I told her that I don't think my job is any harder than hers is, I just don't believe in God. "What can I do to help you believe?" she asked me. I just looked at her dumbfounded. "To believe or not to believe is not a choice, " I told her. "You either feel it or you don't, simple as that." She insisted that it is a choice, so I asked her, "So you're telling me that you could make the choice to believe in Santa Claus?" "That's not the same thing, " she said. Then she went on about how we're all responsible for our choices in life, and I told her I completely agree, but believing is still not a choice. She asked me how I grew up - meaning, I assumed, what kind of religious training I had received as a child, which I took to mean she was going to try to hold my parents responsible for my non-belief. She was really being nosey - I mean, how was any of this any of her business? Still, I stayed engaged in the conversation because I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone push me around for my beliefs. I told her that my mother took us to church sporadically, never anything consistent, but that I had believed my whole life up until a couple years ago when I finally acknowledged to myself that it all seemed like a bunch of nonsense and I didn't feel it in my heart. At all. I told her that my life was no better or worse when I believed than it has been since I stopped believing - that bad and good things happened to me then, and bad and good things happen now. She actually asked me, "If you don't believe in the Lord, where do you get morals?" Huh? I'm not positive I understood what she meant - did she mean what is the source of my morals, or how could I possibly have any morals if I don't believe in God? I told her that I have very high morals, and God doesn't have anything to do with it, that it's actually possible to be a good person just for the sake of being a good person.

Just then, a neighbor whom I hadn't seen in a long while pulled up to the curb and waved to me, so I excused myself from Whatshername. I chatted with my neighbor for a few minutes, and when I turned around, the woman was gone. Then a minute later, here she comes again. Now she has her arms open, and she hugs me and says, "I just don't want you to think I hate you or anything. I love you, and so does God." Blech, blech, blech.

And I did a crappy thing. I told her that my baby has Down syndrome (to which she responded, "Really? It's not even noticeable!" I think I wanted her to say something stupid), and that my husband has cancer. I wanted to make her feel bad. Bad, bad, bad, I know. I just couldn't stand her self-righteous condescension. And when I told her about Michael's cancer, she did feel bad. And I felt just a little self-satisfied. I bet she's praying for all of us right now.

When it was all over, I was shaking I was so offended and livid. With all due respect to my Christian friends (and I have many), where do these people get off? Do they believe they're on commission with God, that they get points for all the people they "recruit"? This tact does nothing but offend and repel. How would it be if I went around preaching to people I didn't know, barely knew, or hell, people I do know, what I believe or don't believe? How would it be taken if I felt free to ask anyone I came into contact with, "You don't believe in God do you?"