On the Fourth of July my mom came with my family to watch the fireworks in Lake City. Normally, Lake City has a very nice fireworks showing. The setting is right off the lake with a very nice sandy beach, a boardwalk and then a grassy knoll. This year, however, it was very damp and the clouds were hanging low and more than one firework went off behind thick clouds and smoke. It was OK, just not spectacular.

Anyway, that’s not why I’m blogging. You see, when my mother came she mentioned a woman from when I was in fourth grade. This particular lady worked as a crossing guard for my school. A very nice woman without a mean bone in her body.

My mom had recently been visiting with this woman.

“And I told her about that time she pulled your hair,” my mom said to me on the fourth.

“That wasn’t her, Mom!”

“Oh.”

It’s amazing how many volumes a single syllable can hold. “Oh.”

It’s been a long time since I was in fourth grade. And despite what my mom told the crossing guard lady recently, I’ve never dwelled over the incident. I do remember this incident and I know the mom who did it. It just taught me to avoid this particular mom who actually volunteered quite a lot through the years.

For the record, it was not the crossing guard lady who pulled my hair. Frankly if I was going to hold a grudge over some incident that happened to me while in school this would not be the incident.

But it all happened when we were in the gym watching a movie. I leaned over to whisper to a friend of mine. And this mother came up and she scratched the side of each of our faces and pulled our hair, telling us to be quiet. I also remember using a boy for a pillow. I think that may have been the first time I ever flirted. Not that one thing has anything to do with the other. It’s just what I remember from that particular grade school movie event.

My mom, by the way, was in the gym. And when I was a young child in fourth grade she never said anything to the other mother. For years when I was in the same groups as this particular mother’s child, my mom never said anything. But as my 15th high school reunion approaches, my mother feels the need to chew out the WRONG woman!

And chew she did.

“That doesn’t sound like me,” crossing lady said.

“I know you did it. I was there,” my mom answered, defending her cub who is now a grown woman.

And then when she told me and I told her she chewed out the wrong woman! My mom has since apologized to the crossing guard. I have assured my mother that 1) I can right my own wrongs and 2) I’m now an adult and more than 20 years have passed. Let bygones be bygones.

So I’ve told my mom that although I may have needed her to slay my dragons when I was a child, I can handle it now. She can listen and go “oh” but really it isn’t necessary to defend my honor.

Still it was sweet of her to think of it.

Just don’t do it again.