The One About Why I Can't Make Friends

Before I begin. You all should know that I have a history of altercations. Mostly with people although there is a lefse griddle and some shopping carts in my feisty history. You should also know that I was let go from my last job for telling my co-worker to Cease And Desist. I'm opinionated, emotional, sensitive and a radical republican.

My husband married me anyway.

I was so excited yesterday when a friend of mine got ahold of me and asked if we wanted to go to the park. The kids and I have not been on a play date since that disastrous day last September when I became a Mom's Club Reject. Some of you may remember, we went to our first meeting with the North Ogden Mom's Club only to be completely ignored. We went home with our tail between our legs and have been licking our wounds all winter, telling ourselves we are good enough and making plans for making new friends that would like us and how much fun we would have with them.

We have known Monica and her family since our first week in Ogden. We all stayed in the same hotel when we arrived and our husbands started their new jobs. They live further north of us and we have both had new baby girls taking up a lot of our time so we haven't gotten together much.

We met at the park and everything was going great! I brought Starbucks! YUM! Her 3 year old and Alex were playing on all of the slides and swings while we held our babies and talked a little. I even used my new ring sling and it worked really well. We walked across the park to a bigger play area and there were already two kids playing there and their Mom's (I use this term loosely) were sitting on the benches talking. These boys were around 4ish and they knew each other. Alex went up three little steps to the opening to a slide that these boys where sitting in front of and they were telling him that he couldn't come up there. He was trying to fight his way up and they were pushing him back. I saw this and I went up (while holding M) and I told those kids that they don't own the slide and he can be there. Then they told Alex, 'you're not our friend, you can't come up here'. On the inside....I lost it...here comes Momma Bear! I told Alex...I'm so sorry that you have to learn about bullies on your SECOND ever trip to the park. But that is life honey and some little boys aren't very nice.

The one little boy looks at me and says, 'Alex's not our friend'. I told him to go wipe that bogger off his face and leave us alone. I then picked Alex up and walked down the stairs. Alex is having a fit because he didn't want to get down. I'm trying to get him to leave with me and these boys came down and started taunting him. 'why don't you go home Alex. go with your Mom Alex.' The Mom's are sitting behind me laughing. I finally get Alex calmed down and tell him we are going to Wendy's because he has been such a good boy. Then I walked right in front of those Mom's and I said 'and I will explain to you all about mean boys and how to handle them.' As we were walking away....Booger Faced Boy yells to us....HAVE FUN ALEX! I wanted to run back and kick him in his little bogger streaked face.

WTH? How can children be bullies at this age? They obviously learned it at home...right? Where else would they learn...you aren't our friend? They were such rude little jerks. I just couldn't believe it. Poor Alex. He just wanted to go down the damn slide.

I relayed this story to Hubby on the way home and he says.

So they didn't hurt him?

No. Not physically. Maybe Mommy is more hurt by what happened then Alex is. I guess I had my share of being bullied as a child and I'm sensitive to it.

So...Mommies. How do you handle the bullies? Did I handle it correctly? In hind sight, I'm wishing I would have said something directly to the Mom's. I swear I turn into a Momma Bear! My claws are still out!

I wonder if they were intimidated by Alex's perfectly matching Gymboree Sweater/Pants/Shoes Combo?

The good news is that Monica still wants to get our kids together! The bad news is that I don't see me making many more friends around here because I just had an altercation with a 4 year old.

Apparently....I don't play well with others!