Monster Mutt

It seems that Aaron is experiencing his first encounters with a school bully. The other day, I picked him up from school and asked him about his day like I always do. He stayed quiet like he always does until I started forcing information out of his cute little brain and that is when he started talking about “Monster Mutt.” He said that there is this older boy that chases him and his friends as soon as he sees them all throughout recess. I asked him where the name “Monster Mutt” came from and he informed me said that another little boy who was also being chased told Aaron about the name. I can see the whole scene in my head like I am watching it on TV. Picture a playground…Children running around and having fun…A small boy cowering behind the monkey bars pointing out a behemoth of a child with his hair all wild, sporting a Megadeath t-shirt, and pushing other children down because they got too close. You can see it, right?


Anyway, I didn’t put too much thought into it because kids are weird and they do weird stuff and most likely, Monster Mutt would go onto the next group of victims in another day or so and that would be the end of that. But then he mentioned it again before going to bed a few nights later. So we started talking about it in more detail because I was starting to worry that maybe Monster Mutt wasn’t another kid, but a pervy janitor with too much time on his hands. Aaron assured me that this was another kid and from his description, Mutt isn’t much taller than Aaron, so I crossed pervy janitor off of the suspect list…for now.

It seems that Aaron and his fellow targets have banned together to form a club to somehow protect themselves from Monster Mutt. When he first mentioned club, Mike and I were concerned that they were leaving kids out and we asked Aaron about it, but he explained that there was only one kid that they don’t let into their club, but only when said kid is pretending to be a vampire.

Um, OK!?!?

Then, Aaron got a big grin on his face and said, “Hey, things are looking up. Maybe we can get the vampire to fight off Monster Mutt!” Good plan honey, just make sure that you remain cordial to the vampire kid cause if he is pretending to be a vampire in preschool, Lord only knows where he is going to end up five, ten years from now, and you ALWAYS want to be nice to the psychopaths.

So, then it was weekend and there was no talk of Mutt until I picked Aaron up from school Monday afternoon and one of the first things he said was that Mutt was at home sick for the day which apparently was a huge victory for the Anti-Mutt Alliance because Aaron was almost giddy about the whole thing. The thing is, I know that this kid, Mutt, most likely is starved for attention and has no idea how to interact with other kids; hence the chasing. He is probably lonely and wants to make friends and this is the only way that he knows how to get any kind of attention. I want to try and explain this to Aaron because I think that this is an important moment to teach tolerance and compassion. I want Aaron to be the kind of kid that all kids want to be friends with; a Ferris Bueller if you will, but less skilled when it comes to scamming his parents.

Perhaps Aaron will be able to crack through Mutt’s gruff exterior and be able to befriend him. Maybe Aaron will become one of Mutt’s best friends and one day they will be the best men in each other’s weddings and when we tell this story at the reception people will laugh and say, “Ahh, how cute!” Or maybe Mutt is just a real asshole and this will be Aaron’s first lesson in the fact that the world is full of them. Either way, I think it’s still a good life lesson.