When I arrived at school this morning, the mother of one of my daughter’s friends said they’d had a traumatic breakfast-time.
“Oh no, what happened?” I said, imagining Coco Pops splattered across the table or lumpy porridge spat into the sink.
“We woke up to find Cleo eviscerated all over the floor of the girls’ bedroom. Suki got her in the night.”
Cleo the hamster had lived just eight short weeks, not even a third of her admittedly short allotted time span on this earth, and Suki the Siamese cat had just confirmed her position as chief hunter in da House.
When Hannah came home from school I asked her how her friend had been at school,
“Fine. Her parents are going to get her a new hamster.”
So finally, the disposable attitude I have failed to banish from my children’s malleable young minds doesn’t just apply to Bratz dolls and talking Daleks. It also applies in their blasé, it’s only money, just chuck it out and get a new one way, to living creatures.
At least my eventual death and that of their father won’t give them too much cause for crying.
“That’s all right, we can adopt a new pair,” they’ll say to each other, shrugging their shoulders at the undertaker.
And by then, they probably will be able to.
Don’t be so hard on them. It may not be anything so awful as a disposable attitude. When Hannah says “Fine. Her parents are going to get her a new hamster.”, she is probably only doing the same thing as your son when he ventures “He doesn’t know how to play Dodge Ball.” as the reason they’re no longer friends. They’re saying the thing which they have learnt (so quickly, bless their little hearts) is socially acceptable, rather than the thing which is in their heart. Your son cracks first and says what’s really in his heart (““And he tore up my work. I had to start again…”), little girls are tougher but what your children are doing is reflecting that they have already learned to be British (well, Anglo-Saxon), i.e. come what may to grit their teeth and say the thing that is expected and accepted.
And they’ve got many many many years before they have to decide whether or not to allow themselves to cry at your funeral.