Pasta and Dissent

It started so innocently.

We were eating the delicious dinner that Perfect Man had spent so much time preparing--pasta with fresh mozzarella and meatballs for the boys, greens with goat cheese, heirloom tomatoes, Nicoise olives and avocado for me. Hammerhead asked me to please drive him to school on Thursday so he could bring his skateboard. I usually drop him at his bus stop (it's closer to where I drop his brother off at high school), but skateboards are prohibited on school buses, and Thursday he wants to bring his board because it's the last day of school and he's spending the night with a friend and he wants to skate with his friend.

"One time," Hammerhead said, "I was just bringing a board--no trucks, just a board--and the driver said, 'What's that?' and I said, "It's just a board but no trucks,' and he STILL made me take it home. He's an asshole."

"That's kind of harsh," I said.

"Everyone thinks he's an asshole," Hammerhead went on. "My friend Anna said 'Bye' to him one day and he just stared at her. So she said, 'Asshole!' to him while she was getting off the bus."

The boys laughed. Aunt Pillowhead's hackles went up.

"Maybe he didn't respond because he can't tell if kids are really being nice to him or mocking him," I said. "It must be a really hard job."

"He signed up for it," Hammerhead's brother said, matter-of-factly, shrugging off my attempt to illuminate the challenges a person who drives a busload of insolent middle-schoolers around daily might face.

And I thought, What are you, some kind of little Republican? Because you've enjoyed a life of privilege and options, you think that every other person on this planet has the same smorgasbord of choices, choices based on wants and whims, not needs and necessity?

But what I said was, "He may have signed up for it, but you don't know why. You don't know what it's like to have to take the first job you can get just so you can pay the bills, feed your family, feed yourself. And you don't know what it's like to drive a busload of middle-schoolers around every day."

Hammerhead's brother shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "I know I'm right."

And then Perfect Man, slumped with disappointment, having worked so hard to create a repast that would inspire goodwill and conviviality, spoke to Hammerhead's brother, saying something like, "Talk to us again when you have the creds to back what you're saying. You don't have any idea what it's like to work for a living."

Hammerhead's brother shrugged again.

And because I haven't learned to just put another forkful of food in my mouth and move on, I said this: "What I'm saying, [Hammerhead's Brother], is that some people are not educated and so they have fewer options. And some people are educated but they have immediate needs and crises--a dying elderly parent, children to feed--and they have to do what they have to do to take care of those crises. And so to say about someone who has a difficult job, 'He signed up for it,' sounds kind of insensitive to me. It might not be the case that when it came to finding a job, that bus driver picked the job he thought he'd love the most. And to call him an 'asshole' because he enforces the rules sounds disrespectful to me."

Well, by that time, dinner was pretty much over, and not because it had been eaten up. Hammerhead's brother, who fully hated me at this point, smiled a little smile and said a sarcastic, "Okay!" while Perfect Man tapped my leg, a desperate, Morse-like code for "PLEASE DO NOT OFFER SOCIOLOGY LESSON NOW. NOW IS FOR EATING PASTA AND TALKING ABOUT SPORTS. REMINDER: KID IS TEENAGER. YOU CANNOT MAKE HIM CARE." And Hammerhead, delighted to be the "Good One" for a change, cheerfully commented that many people today are indeed oppressed in ways we cannot know.

If I were the mom, this wouldn't have been sad, at least not for me. I would have continued the conversation, full speed ahead, whether it was wanted or not. Until the child had seen the world the way the world should be seen. Mother's job: To Shape Character.

But I'm the stepmom, and so it was kind of sad. I hit the barrier, the wall where the conversation stops. For stepmothers, it's about the service you provide. Save your perspective for when it's asked for. (And honey, don't hold your breath.)

Being a stepmother is, in some ways, a whole lot like being a bus driver. Your job is to facilitate a journey for some kids who'd be having a whole lot more fun if you weren't there. You must keep them safe, toe the line, and enforce the rules, all the while accepting the fact that for a lot of the time, no matter what you say or do not say, you will be seen as an asshole.

Not that I'm complaining. After all, I signed up for it.