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IF ONLY HE WAS A LEG MAN...
"Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own com
panions...” —Montaigne
When I saw the sheet to sign up for parent/ teacher conferenc
es, I was very excited. I imagined all the wonderful things I would
hear about my brilliant child. “He's a genius, a genius I tell you!
You have to get him into a special school, and fast! You shouldn't
be wasting a moment of this kind of potential!" I envisioned the
teacher gushing on and on. Harvard here we come. Then I got an
odd call. Could we please move the time so that the pre-school
director could sit in on the meeting with us?
Hmmm. I guess she wants to tell us how brilliant he is, too.
Good idea, leave no stone unturned. And so, hubby and I arranged
our schedules so that we both could be there with the director
and the pre-k teacher, our dear Ms. Rachel. The day arrived and
Jeff and I filed into the office with Ms. Rachel and the assistant
director. We looked at the work our student had been doing, the
assessment methods the state uses, and heard that Justice is on
track academically.
And then she got straight to the "potty talk" issue. He has
been saying penis again. Gasp. He wants to build things with ana
tomically correct parts. Stunning. (Wait,
she had totally skipped the genius stuff,
I guess we'll be coming back to that).
AND. she reached down into her bag and
pulled out two round, white coffee filters.
Holding them up at chest level she broke the news. "He drew these
in after school." (Dramatic Pause).
“They're boobs." she informed us, reddening slightly. Jeff
leaned over to inspect the white spheres more closely. "What are
those, liver spots?" he inquired, pointing to some small, round
creatures to the right of a nipple.
"No, they're freckles," I corrected. The symmetry was amazing,
and the overall form, well, Matisse himself would have been proud.
I looked up and caught the teacher's eyes. Maybe we weren't tak
ing this as seriously as they expected us to. I hypothesized that it
could be this lackadaisical attitude that landed us here in the first
place. Sigh.
"They aren't just boobies," she told us. "He said they are the
fake boobies that mommy wears to work everyday."
"WHAT!? I don't wear fake boobies!" I protested. Again, prob
ably not the point. I don't think Ms. Rachel understood how diffi
cult it was for me to take the conversation seriously when she was
still holding the two white coffee
filters poignantly over her own
chest.
And Jeff had still not
stopped staring at the things.
They aren't real! Jeez, men and
boobs. Obviously, Justin gets
it from his father, "It's not my
fault!" I wanted to sob. I had a
flashback to the movie
Parenthood with Steve Martin when they are called into the office
to discuss their son's troubles at school and immediately start
blaming the other parent, "You let them watch too much TV!" "You
babied him all the time!" "You smoked pot in college!"
Suddenly I began to get paranoid: had I created a pervert?
Would he be sitting in my basement in 30 years stroking his rifle
and leafing through T&A magazine? But wait, I read the research.
It's okay for a child to see his opposite-sex parent nude until four
or five years of age, and then it's okay to see them in underwear.
And seeing the same-sex parent nude actually builds self-esteem
and healthy body image. Is this how Giorgione's pre-k teacher re
acted when he scribbled the beginnings of his "Sleeping Venus?"
What if we had a Cezanne hanging in our house and Justice was
just trying to imitate it? (We don't). After all, the female form has
inspired artists for centuries. It is, perhaps, the most popular sub
ject in the history of art. This is obviously an evolutionary pull; it
cannot be helped. It's not my fault!!
More likely than any artistic tendencies I believe that Justice's
affinity for breasts probably began as a neonate. When he first
suckled at those life-giving orbs, filled up his tummy and said,
"Ahhh, now that's the good stuff." My breasts sustained him for
the first months of his life, giving him
food, comfort and warmth. It was a tough
time when he hit 18 months and I decided
to wean him, lest I have to live as an all
day pacifier for eternity.
He gave up the physical attachment to them fairly easily, but
the fondness remains. My low-cpt shirts are his favorites, pro
nouncing me "beautiful" in them as a haze comes over his little
blue eyes. He is known to still reach up and give the old girls a
"honk" from time to time, and in moments of stress he still tries to
sneak a hand down the front of my shirt and cop a feel.
I've never really thought too much of these "oddities" because
I understand his relationship with, and attachment to, my bosom.
But as we sit, filters still teetering (hee hee) above Ms. Rachel's
waist, I realize that Justice and I are probably the only ones who
understand this relationship.
We concede that we will speak to him and explain that those
kinds of art projects should be saved for home. They remind us
that they don't view this as a behavior problem, but we should be
aware that next year in public school it might be seen as just that.
Sigh again.
I still haven't decided if I'm going to send him to public school
or hide him uncer a rock. We may have to head for Europe
where his boob lust won't be squelched. But I
guess the best I can hope for is that we
can turn him on to legs before kindergar
ten hits, or at the very least, convince
him to switch to asses.
Elizabeth Deroshia
beavislsbuflett®
yahoo.com
Suddenly I began to get paranoid:
had I created a pervert?
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