i need a hero

Dear Marianne,

There was an unholy scrum of children, teachers and parents outside chestnut class on Tuesday morning. This is because the hallway is home to two sets of toilets and pegs for four classes, this coupled with 80 freaked out Mothers and their five year olds paralysed by fear created a bit of a log jam which even the most helpful of class helpers couldn’t do anything about.
Between us we found Anna’s peg and put endless bags on it, took out the water bottle (didn’t we used to drink from taps in the loos) and made our way through the unmerry throng to the door of the classroom, where I told the teacher that Anna’s lunch bag was not labelled but that Anna would know it. This was really for Anna’s sake rather than the teacher’s and although she smiled a weak smile at me I knew she was thinking: “do you really think that I care about your daughter’s lunch box or that come lunchtime I will evenly vaguely recall you or the lunchbox, you sad over protective Mother”. I may be putting an unfair spin on the teacher by inventing thoughts for her, but I can’t help it – she has my daughter by the pig tails for the whole day and I just don’t know what goes on do I?

Actually I was trying to make it up with Anna who was not only paralysed by fear, but also upset because I had put her in her winter uniform and despite the fact that I had assured her it would be the thing to do, pretty much every other girl was in her summer dress. This is the sort of thing that can stay in a childs mind for years and which they then draft in to arguments later to prove a point; generally that I am a bad Mum. I have done similar things over time with all the children, but I always take solace in the memory that my sister in law sent her son off to school in his uniform on “super hero day”, and because she was working she was not able to make amends so that her son had to be “super uniform boy” all day. Anyway despite my faux pas with the dress Anna gave me a big cuddle and with her name on a post it note stuck firmly to her cardigan ventured in to the classroom alone. Hooray I thought no worries or wobbles with Anna.

Of course, by day three (today) Anna is very wobbly about going to school, apparently she is upset that some of her friends are not in her new class and more generally she is upset because everything is new; new teacher, new pegs, new rules etc. and despite knowing that this is part of the process at the beginning of each new term I get dragged in to her drama. Anna is probably upset because she was the last to sit down on the carpet, or lost her way to the toilets or because since I don’t know what she’s talking about when she says: “those round strawberry things in packets” I can’t buy them to put in her pack lunch and now she feels different to the other pack lunchers.

Even though I know it is only these small things which are the cause of her unhappiness, and that they will pass when she settles in to the new regime, it doesn’t stop me inventing a scenario to freak me out for the day. As soon as she steps in to the classroom, she is bullied by her teacher, who I am sure now I think about it, is a dead ringer for Miss Trunchball from the film Matilda (no of course I haven’t read the book) which is Anna’s favourite film and she is Matilda, so Miss Trunchball has locked her in a cupboard with nails in the door and now she has got her by her pigtails and is throwing her out of the school window.

I realise that my world view is completely skewed by my children’s t.v. and film consumption. Before Anna became Matilda, The Railway Children was her favourite film and before that Robin Hood (the Errol Fynn version) I think that she may well have been born in 1926. Mind you when Becky was three her favourite film was The Wizard of OZ and she was Dorothy until she was about seven, so it could be genetic. We still have it in our collection, its all stretched and wonky and even in the Land of Oz, it is not always glorious technicolour. I actually feel physically sick when I watch that film now, because I have seen it hundreds of times and it has had a clockwork orange effect on me. I know things about that film that only the editor should know, I know for example, the difference between the film on the video we have and other cuts that appear on t.v. ocassionally, I know that Dorothy trips on the Lions cloak during the song: “Courage” and I know that Dorothy (well Judy Garland – but she will allways be Dorothy to me) nearly laughs during her first scene with the Lion and I know all the dialogue from beginning to end. I’m not telling you this to be a show off or Big Bob as they say in Dundee, but to illustrate to you just how deeply disturbed I am by all this.

Anyway, back to Anna and Miss Trunchball. I mentioned to her best friend Archie that she was feeling a bit wobbly, so that if he could look out for her a bit today that would be great. As I waved her off Archie put his arm around her shoulder and said:”I won’t let you fall over Anna” , he took wobbly literally of course, he’s a bloke after all, but I could have kissed him; if he’d have let me. Who needs Robin Hood, Matilda, Dorothy or even Uniform Boy when you have “Super Archie!”

Rx