“Daddy, I am in love with Joel,” 6 year-old Sophie pronounced on that drive home from school, mixed in with the voluminous barrage of other things she had said before that. So well mixed that I missed it. I had been rapid firing my non-responses to her eternal diatribe with serial ‘uh-huh’ and ‘wow’ and ‘that’s great honey’-s. I try, I really do, but there are only so many words I can hold at a time, and then I go cross-eyed. They talk and talk and talk, and then they talk some more. My cup literally runneth over, with all the pronouncements spilling all over my saturation point.
“Wait…what!?” I say. My subconscious almost always rescues me when keywords like jail, blood, penis and love buzz out. I just need to have my subconscious, the reluctant court reporter, read back the last couple minutes.
“I said, Joel is pretty much my boyfriend and I am in love with him.”
Christ. Didn’t think I’d be here already.
“Sophie…don’t you think you’re a little young?” I say, completely flabbergasted that I am actually saying the same stupid shit my parents said to me. Don’t you think you’re a little young? Really!? Fuel on the fire, you idiot! Code blue! Code blue!
“NO, Daddy. Just because I’m little doesn’t mean I can’t be in love.”
We pull into the driveway. I turn the car off and sit for a second. Exhale. Inhale.
“Sophie, I know you have affection for Joel. He’s great. But that kind of love is something… that happens when you have a commitment to someone else. When you’re much older. It doesn’t mean you don’t blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,” I heard myself say, and she exhaled to interrupt the diatribe she had been subjected to so many times. Live your own life, love will come. Don’t follow a man. Leave your high school sweetheart at home when you go to college. All that crap she had been pummeled with through her young life, by both myself and C.
“OK, Daddy. I am towards love with Joel,” she restated as she jumped out of the van and ran into the house.
How perfect and reasonable and wise and Sophie. She got it. She said it out of annoyance, and more to placate me than anything, but she got it. At least the seed was planted, and would hopefully forestall the weeping over lost love until at least high school.
I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about the same dam-building exercises with Lilah. Lilah the tomboy, Lilah the brave. She was going to do the heart stomping, thank you very much, all with a sweet smile on her round little face, and likely with a small stuffed animal still hidden in her backpack. And she wouldn’t be interested in all that love crap, anyway. Not for a good while.
Except for the fact that all her little 1st and 2nd grade friends are. Holy shit! Do they watch soap operas while chugging hormone-infested chocolate milk all day? It’s one crush after another! The girls cluck around the playground like speedy little hens, trading boyfriends and crushes and misunderstandings with each other that aren’t due until at least middle school.
But Lilah splits her time between the boys running and wrestling and making low-level trouble, and the girls doing gymnastics on the bars, when they’re not huddled in their social gymnastics. She grows weary of either side after awhile. But now that Paradise has suddenly been lost and the fig leafs have been passed out, she’s sided with the girls. A little bored, a little annoyed, but ultimately allied with the fairer, smaller sex. Talking about crushes. Boys writing girls names on their hands. Flashing dumb, open-mouthed smiles as they stop by on their way to slaughter bugs and practice free throws. Bragging to each other in some elementary version of conquest. Lilah thinks it’s hilarious. But worse, she’s also suddenly fraught with peril and a new female worry. Does anyone like me?
“Nate told me Ray has a crush on me. He said they’ve been friends since they were little and he read his diary when they were three and Ray wrote in it that he had a crush on me,” Lilah reported as she finished her lunch in the car on the way to pick up Sophie. Too busy playing to eat again.
Her face through the rear view mirror had a weird excitement to it, embarrassed and hopeful and hilarious all at the same time. He couldn’t have a crush on ME, Daddy, it’s all so very silly I know, but it’s kind of cool that he has a crush on me, if it’s true, though I still kinda hope not… what do you think? All in a pleading look. I had to be careful with this one. This doesn’t happen often with my little bulldog Lilah.
“Really,” I said, smiling back at her. “At age three?”
She laughed, though her face was crestfallen. “That’s what I said! I think he’s just telling lies to mess with me. I said they couldn’t read that early and he said, ‘Uh-huh! I remember!’ He’s just messing with me,” she finished and shoved the rest of her sandwich in her mouth, staring out the window.
She didn’t want him to have a crush on her, but not as much as she desperately did. Now that there were all these crushes flying around. Who wants to be the girl left out?
“I think Ray does have a crush on you. Nate just doesn’t know how to tell you because he’s an idiot boy like all of them are, me included. No, they couldn’t read or write then, but yes, Ray has a crush on you Lilah.”
She smiled brightly and chewed. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Daddy.”
We pulled up to the front of the middle school. Awkward pre-teens and just-teens pranced and pushed and cartwheeled on the grass. Some of them grappled with the other sex, play fighting and groping in some bizarre, uncomfortable dance.
One couple was actually making out on the sign for the damn school. Tyler and his girlfriend. Tyler the man-child’ 6th grader, the bane of Sophie’s class, along with his unlucky flame of three months. Sophie came over to meet us. She leaned on the car and tossed her backpack on the floor.
“Hi, Soph! I see Tyler and his girlfriend are moving the smooching session out of the lunch area.”
“Yeah. It’s soooo gross. They’re always fighting over the same piece of gum.”
“Ewwww! They are!” Lilah said, watching the pubescent spectacle out her window.
“Don’t the teachers supervise when you guys are outside? What the hell!”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “They’re too BUSY. “
“That never would’ve flied when I was in middle school. The vice principal was outside busting heads until everyone was gone.”
We stood outside the cars in the dusty parking lot and the girls laughed in our new car that wasn’t the bright green minivan, but the Pilot that still smelled new, a little less each day, but hanging on nonetheless. Socks and sandwiches and dust creeping in slowly.
The girls opened up all the doors and lounged and laughed, just like they did as little girls years ago, except now their backpacks were heavy and their limbs were long, and instead of talking about imaginary nonsense they were talking about the nonsense of this year’s “Health and Family Living.” Exactly like last years’ fifth grade talk, it turns out, only this version was just finished today.
“She even made us color in the penises again! Only this time it was with highlighters,” Sophie mimicked their gruff teacher with broad strokes and a deep voice. “C’mon girls, color ‘em all in!” No more crayons for you guys. It’s business now.
They sat in the car and talked about the vagaries of erections, along with theatrical renditions of what they were for and how dogs got them and Lilah “ewww”-d from the backseat through raucous giggles and I just closed my eyes and breathed through my nose again. She was gonna find out anyway. Dammit. Hurry up and end already, school year. I’ve had enough.
“I found out that Ray does have a crush on me for sure. It’s obvious,” Lilah said the next day as I held her hand and we walked across the expanse of blacktop after school.
“How?”
“When I walked past him at lunch, he was blushing like a cherry,” she said, and looked up at me and smiled sweetly. Not a joke, just a perfect image and I tried not to laugh at such a perfect statement. Little crushes blush like cherries.
This is the best one yet, Matt! How you tied it all together ~ priceless.
I could actually picture the scenes, thinking I was there.