Hamster balls of anger

New rule: Sleepovers at which children do not actually sleep must be held on Friday evening so that there is time to make a complete recovery before Monday morning.

Kallan woke up this morning, made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen, and then laid down on the kitchen floor and began to wail about how she was too sick to go to school.  Her eye hurt, her throat hurt, her stomach hurt . . . the symptoms changed as she tried to find one that would gain my sympathy and allow her to go back to bed.  I finally said to her, “Listen.  I know that you are tired, and that being tired makes the day seem impossible.  But there is no way you are staying home unless you are willing to agree that you are never ever going on another sleepover ever again.”

Somehow, she managed to drag herself through the morning and out onto the bus.

Although I did help her out by taking Maj aside and asking her to imagine that Kallan was traveling in a huge rolling hamster ball of anger.  I will pay for that imagery later (when a giggling Maj tells a still crabby Kallan about it), but it got us through our morning.  Maj gave Kallan a wide berth as she imagined that huge plastic ball of bad mood and hostility rolling past her in the hallway.

I do not envy Kallan’s teacher today, as Kallan is one of 5 girls in the class who attended the same sleepover.  That’s a lot of bad sleepy-girl energy on a Monday morning.  That’s a lot of imaginary hamster balls rolling about.  Plus, if the joyous laughter at sleepover pick-up was any indication, all of the girls loved Kallan’s wickedly funny (and scarily accurate) impression of their teacher.

Kallan has a very good ear, and she is a gifted mimic.  Because she tends to use her talents for evil, her impressions are also incredibly funny.  I am looking forward to discussing these facts with the principal someday soon.

Probably sooner rather than later.  Apparently, there was some excitement late last week in Kallan’s class when one of the boys passed around a note to the other boys asking them to list the girls in the class they would most like to kiss.  Kallan’s teacher went a little ballistic when she intercepted the note and gave the class a stern talking to about appropriate behavior in the 3^rd and 4^th grade.  This lecture is the basis for Kallan’s latest impression of her teacher, and it is pretty hilarious.

Horrifyingly, the teacher appears to have suggested (according to Kallan) that the talk of kissing was appropriate for older students in the 5^th and 6^th grade.  This news set Kallan’s class abuzz as they all know 5^th and 6^th graders and never imagined that they might be kissing one another.  I tried to casually dismiss this possibility by pointing out that Maj is in 5^th grade, and that she isn’t yet interested in kissing anyone.

But Kallan responded with, “You can’t use Maj to decide when people might want to kiss, Mom.  Maj is never going to want to kiss anyone unless there is a way to do it without touching and trading germs!”  And then she rolled onto the floor hugging herself and shrieking with laughter.

She has a point.

When Kallan told me about all of the excitement in her class, she was just beside herself with joy – the scandal of it!  The boys getting into trouble, the teacher freaking out, and talk of kissing!  All rolled into one glorious package of inappropriateness.  THIS is what Kallan dreamed about when she imagined how things would be at her new school.

Kallan was clear on who the ringleader among the boys was, by the way.  He was the “reaaaaalllly big boy who is waaaay taller than everyone else and never pays attention to directions.”  Her voice as she described this boy did not sound horrified, but fascinated and happy.  Uh oh.

I did not dare ask where Kallan’s name had fallen on this list of girls the boys wanted to kiss.  But I did tell Kallan that we have enough on our plates at the moment, what with re-learning the letter “k,” adjusting to homework, and having to take timed multiplication drills.  We did not, I told her, have any time in our schedules left for letters home from the school about how Kallan was caught behind the swing set kissing the really big boy who does not follow directions.

More joyful peals of giggly laughter.

Uh oh.

In Maj news, a very big-girl decision from Maj to report.  When she started at the new school, Maj asked me not to have her tested for advanced placement in any of her classes.  She wanted to check things out, and she was concerned that advanced placement classes would mean that she wouldn’t be able to as easily make friends with her same-age classmates.  She came home on Friday to report that everything in Reading, English, and Math (the classes for which advanced placement is possible) was waaaaaay too easy, and so could I ask for her to be bumped up.  Her teacher has agreed, and so Maj will be testing to be in the harder classes.

Go Maj!  Kissing will be there when you are ready.