Drop Dead Fred

Well this has been a sad weekend for my 8-year-old daughter – she lost a close friend, and has spent some time in tears.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone too much that children are very fragile creatures who need to be nurtured and to be as accepting of their friends as you can be.  Children can see through the outer shell of everyone and only see the good that is within.  Kids don’t see skin color as something to segregate – and they don’t measure their friends by the size of their body, because they can sense the size of your hearts.  What MAY surprise you though is that my dear little child blames me for the loss of her friend… I’m the bad guy.

As my daughter shrieked in fear and dropped to the ground in terror and calling out his name, I was just gob smacked and had no idea what her problem was, or why she was screaming at me.  Droning on and on was his name “Fred” she uttered again and again as she searched the ground.  Yeah, my daughter made friends with a Potato Bug named Fred and had been coddling him in her hand for about a half hour before I came out to watch Simon and kick the soccer ball with her.

It was while she and I were scrimmaging up and down the lawn that I body checked her near the deck and she lost her grip on Fred.  She’d been playing ball the whole time with him in her hand, unbeknownst to me.  My crashing into her to gain control of the ball caused her to lose her grip and sent Fred flying.  She freaked out.  We quickly discussed why she was in a panic and when she started pointing the finger at me, I wasn’t going to accept the blame.  I explained to her it was not my fault she was playing with Fred in her hand, and that she made the mistake of doing so – I didn’t even know he was a passenger!

“It was not a mistake!”  She wailed and continued to divide the blades of grass searching again for Fred and calling to him.  And to be quite honest with you, Simon and I continued to kick the ball while she searched fruitlessly for her new pal.  She soon went inside to cry a bit and grab a tissue (the childe ruse to make a quick round of the house, showing her tears to garner support or sympathy) only to return again and search again in the same spot.

Her mother soon came outside and strolled through the grass asking what was going on and learned of Megan’s plight.  Then I regaled my version of the story, which earned the response: “She was playing, with him in her hand?”  We kind of smiled at one another rolling our eyes, as there was clearly nothing that could have been done to prevent this from happening (other than maybe not body checking the kid, which I did not tell her mother about).  Megan stood up and came over to whine at her mother and gain any sympathy that she could squeeze from the proverbial stone.  She got some, but not much.

Sara came out soon also, which prompted Megan to return to her post near the deck and call for Fred some more, treading on where he likely would have been.  I held my tongue that she was probably making Fred Jelly in the grass thanks to all her hither and yon walking.  “What’s wrong with her?”  Sara asked.  After the Reader’s Digest version of the story, she parroted her mother by asking: “She was playing, with him in her hand?”  To which K and I both started to giggle at, and increased the eight-year-old’s volume in her hunt for the potato bug.

I tried to comfort her by saying that maybe Fred was returning to where they first met, and she might find him waiting there… like tomorrow.  In all her brilliance she replied that she didn’t remember where she had found him.  Which I am sure is my fault too.  Elbow to the head and all.

I’m just saying…

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