Snickerdoodles

This cute little girl hijacked my blog, I see.  Her ruse worked, and she got lots of comments.  Thank you, friends.  Every ten-year-old could use some extra attention at times, especially with a new baby in the house. 

I promised Ari some stories about when I was in fourth grade.  It's been a tough year socially for Ari, learning to navigate more mature social waters and keep friendships afloat.  I remember fourth grade being quite tumultuous.  I've already told you this story. Here's another one...

So I was eight when I started fourth grade.  I have a late birthday.  For my ninth birthday, I decided to bring cookies to school.  Snickerdoodles were my favorite, and I had made them lots of times with my mom.  This was before school treats had to be store-bought and peanut-, gluten- and lactose-free.  Our school has banned birthday treats altogether, which is brilliant, I say.  It prevents my kids from consuming a grossly sugary, over-processed lump of lard on an almost weekly basis.  And for better of for worse, it prevents things like this from happening...

The night before my birthday, I mixed up a batch of snickerdoodles and baked them.  When they were all out of the oven, golden-brown and cinnamon-coated, I counted them and there weren't enough!  I was short maybe seven or eight cookies.  I must have eaten a loooot of cookie dough!  Some of the cookies were bigger than others, so I cut the big ones in half, put them in a tupperware and went to bed.

The next day at school when it was time for the birthday girl to shine, I pulled out my tupperware and carefully handed out a snickerdoodle to each of my classmates.  I fervently, but ridiculously, hoped that nobody would notice that some of the cookies had a straight side instead of being round.  What I should have done was give the half-cookies to my best friends, the girls who might understand.  But fourth grade is not a time of understanding, and I gave the ugly cookies to the children I didn't necessarily like.  The boy who once pointed out in front of the whole class that I had dog poop on my shoe, for example.  I think it was that same boy who, as I magnanimously and benevolently bestowed one of my home made masterpieces on each child, said loudly, "Thanks for HALF a COOKIE!"

Under my new, pink corduroy and fleece pant suit, my skin turned hot as I blushed to the core.  In my fourth grade microcosm, it seemed as if everything was lost.  Of course it wasn't.  In fact, even if I didn't know it then, things could get much worse.  Example:  Lip Gloss-gate.

Looking back, I am grateful that I had the chance to fail.  All my best stories are based on disasters.  I don't think my parents consciously watched me make snickerdoodles by myself, peeking around the corner and whispering to each other that, gee, they hoped I'd have enough.  They didn't purposefully hold back their assistance in order to teach me the "valuable life lesson" of humiliation.   They probably just saw that I was making treats for my class and said, "Oh. OK."  End of story.

I daresay there is too much engineering of children's lives, experiences and environments these days, and I'm just as guilty as the next well-meaning parent, probably.  I laughed the other day, though, when Ari complained that her leg hurt.  Simultaneously, Golda said, "It's growing pains," and Ruby said, "Drink more water."  I felt in that moment like I might be doing something right:  teaching a lesson just as valuable as public humiliation:  Bucking Up.  Ya gotta be tough, kids, because in life, sometimes you run out of snickerdoodles.