Up until now, Malcolm has been brutally and unbendingly honest with us. When we ask him if he hits somebody, he says, “yes.” When we ask him if he broke something, he admits it, if he did. Yesterday, I asked him if we was being mean to the cat, he replied, “just a wittle bit.” Today, however was a different story.
We went to baseball practice again. (For those who follow this blog closely, I was excited because the regular coach was absent and the replacement had lots of energy and engaged the kids really well. I was so bummed to learn that the regular coach will be back next week!) After practice ended, we rounded up the gear and set off for the car. I couldn’t find his bat, and we looked all over for it. After a while, Malcolm told me that he saw the little boy take it. I asked which boy, and he said the boy with the brown skin. This kinda made sense to me, as I had seen one of the boys playing in the outfield with a bat during the practice. I didn’t remember taking Malcolm’s bat out of our sports bag, so I asked whether Malcolm had seen the boy take the bat out of our bag, and he said, “yes.” I asked a second time to confirm that he had, in fact, seen the boy take our bat out of the bag, and he confirmed that he did. Boy, was I mad.
I got my speech ready for the boy’s mom as we walked around the park looking for them. I was going to say something along the lines of, “Are you teaching your kids to steal, or are you just not parenting at all?” I realized that I, the white guy, was walking on slippery ice by accusing the black kid of taking our stuff, but I had an eye witness, and my eye witness had never been wrong before. When we didn’t find them in the park, I went to the office and told the coach everything that I knew, hoping that justice would come next week at the latest. 
And then, we got home.
Sitting on the floor of our kitchen, underneath a large pile of shopping bags, was Malcolm’s bat. I was really bummed. Not only did Malcolm stop telling the truth, but this was the first time I had noticed Malcolm noticing a difference in skin color. Sadly, his first act of racial identification was to accuse (wrongly) a black kid of stealing. Thus, Malcolm joined the huge population of white people who, when asked about their assailant’s identity said, “I don’t know, but was a black guy!” I can only guess at how bad I would have felt if the family had still been at the park and I would have laid into them. We’re not out of the woods, yet, as we still have to explain what happened to the coach next week. This week, though, we have to start talking to Malcolm about telling the truth. It is a sad time, indeed.
Tags: baseball, Malcolm misbehaves
Loading ...
Don't forget about when we were in Hawaii and Malcolm saw the bald black man in the water.
"He looks like a brownie!! He looks delicious!"
See, so it all balances out.
all I can suggest is that you have a second child. Then the other one is always to blame — problem solved.
The price of technology! Not only will kids of the current generation have to cope with the age-old problem of parents showing pictures of them naked in the bath to their girl/boyfriends, but now the gory details of their antics (good, bad, and utterly embarrassing) are also plastered on blogs for the world to see! Jeez, who'd be a kid!