teasing

Message to kids everywhere: If you're going to tease my daughter for being different, at least get it right, will you?

 

Evangeline is a girl who likes Spider-man. I know that's difficult to comprehend for young minds who have been conditioned to think that superheroes are for boys, and girls like only frilly things like Princesses and dresses, but it's true nonetheless. Evangeline likes to wear pretty dresses, but she also knows the classic Spider-man theme song, dressed up as Superman last Halloween, and carries a Spider-man backpack to school in the morning.

 

That's a difficult concept to get, I realize, which is probably why you felt the need to tease her Friday during lunch. For the record, the proper words to the tease are not:

Evangeline and Spider-man, sitting in a tree,

K-I-S-N-Y and Z.

First comes Evangeline, then comes Mary,

Then comes Evangeline with a baby carriage.

This particular taunt is ancient. I learned it in grade school, and my parents learned it when they were children. Little twerps have probably used some variant of it on some of the greatest minds of American and English history, including Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and the anonymous poet of Beowulf. If you're going to invoke cruel magic, at least learn to recite the incantation properly.

 

Evangeline cracked up once I explained how badly you had mangled that particular taunt. I haven't laughed that hard at a would-be bully in years.

 

(And by the way, you'll probably find her better inured to your attacks the next time you try them. I warned her that in my experience that "just ignoring bullies so they'll go away" doesn't work, and that fighting back is just as bad, since it would lower her to your level. I suggested that she laugh instead, not at you, but at the silliness of the taunt. Maybe you can help arrange the wedding.)