A Mouse Tail

 

 After picking up the kids from school the other day, I said we'd go for a walk and head to the local pet store to buy some chews for the gerbils. Bronwyn said I'd read her mind...or rather that her 'lucky penny' (whatever that is) was obviously working. Apparently, she was going to ask if we could go to the pet store because she was intent on buying a small mouse, a cat toy. She told me that a few other girls in the class had these 'pets' on their desks. It reminded me of the icons we put on our desks as kids; troll dolls, fruit pencil toppers etc.

I suppose this stuff just carries on from one generation to the next. River reluctantly accompanied us, dragging his feet. Usually he enjoys stores, any store, but he hadn't been to this pet store before and without a previous visit or some visual to help he had trouble knowing where we were going. Of course, once we were there he busied himself taking items off the shelves and carefully putting them back...over and over. Bronwyn and I selected some chews for the gerbils and then moved to the the cat section where Bronwyn selected a mouse toy.

So Bronwyn got her mouse home and made a little house for it out of an empty smoked oyster box.

She took it to school the following day. When I met her after school, she seemed quite downcast. "No one liked my mouse." she said, forlornly. One girl had said it wasn't as 'real' as her mouse. Another had commented that the 'house' Bronwyn had made for it was "weird". Admittedly, she is a little under-the-weather (and sensitive at the best of times), but as we sat huddled on one of the playground benches, and she held her little mouse house, I felt an acute pang of love and pathos. And then I glanced over at River, who was involved in his usual solitary walk around the playground while the other kids chase and laugh around him in groups. School is not an easy place. There was one girl in particular who had upset Bronwyn, perhaps the girl who first started the mouse-on-the-desk thing. "She's a glamour girl," said Bronwyn, "she really likes clothes and boys" (later she described a 'glamour' girl as a girl who is fancy in the way she dresses and acts and wants boys to be attracted to her)...yes, they are 7 and 8 year olds! I saw the girl and, without being able to define what it was about her, I knew what Bronwyn was describing. I said school was full of so many different types of people all in one place and that she would come across girls like that all the way through school, that she just had to ignore them (stupid advice, really). The important thing, I said, was that she liked her mouse. But clearly that wasn't the most important thing to Bronwyn.

I never thought of 7 being a 'difficult' age (I suppose they all have their moments), but perhaps it is. It struck me that Bronwyn had got a mouse and made a nest for it; she'd taken it to school no doubt in an effort to join in and be social. But it didn't turn out the way she thought it would. I'd cooo-ed and said how cute the mouse was and the little home she'd made for it. It is cute. But the other kids don't feel that way. It's as if she is being forced to discard her cute, small-child, habits or risk the mocking of school friends who are older or maturing differently. And it is causing confusion and sadness in her. Schools are the scourge of innocence. The more experience I have with them...and let's not forget I am a teacher, the less I like about them. And I believe the kids go to a great school; by school standards. If I didn't need to work and make money then I would home school both of them. The argument about socializing kids cuts no ice with me. What social skills? How to be bullied, or bully? or change yourself to please others? How to hide anything that is not deemed, at some point in time by some random person who happens to be popular, to be cool? There is no point saying to a kid (unless they happen to be popular) "just be yourself". School is a minefield of differing expectations. The hardest thing of all is 'being yourself'. The stronger pull is to be like everyone else...assimilate into a majority. Bronwyn has a strong personality, but I wonder if she will withstand the pressure to conform. Will she drop the astronomy that she loves and adapt herself to what she believes will make her popular with the other girls...the girls who dictate what it is to be cool and popular. I am encouraged that she is still taking her mouse to school and sitting it on her desk, regardless of what the other girls said.