Bitty Buddha – The Second Magpie

"Dickbutkus" by photo by Alan Light. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dickbutkus.jpg#/media/File:Dickbutkus.jpg — “Dickbutkus” by photo by Alan Light. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons –

I think being part of the human tribe is hard, but for my seven-year-old Buddha, it seems kind of cake-walky. It’s not that nothing bad ever happens to him. I mean, a few weeks ago he breathlessly announced that he was pretty sure he’d met a bully at school. Yet his thrilled expression matched that of someone who’d spotted a Yeti. Some boy had cornered him at the water fountain and said, “ME NO LIKE YOUR NAME!'” (Maybe it was a Yeti.) My son happily added, “I just ignored him.” He saw the whole situation as an opportunity to exercise his willpower and kindness.

If my genetic matter had any bearing on the situation at all, there would have been some spitting of warm mouth-water into certain people’s too-close-together eyeballs. But that, of course, is half the reason I’m so fascinated by his insights into a life well-lived. He really addresses some of the most basic and troubling challenges of living among others. Case in point: what he shared with me during the three-minute car ride from school today…

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU MEET SOMEONE WITH A BAD NAME

Mom, they moved me to a new bus this week.

OH? DO YOU LIKE YOUR NEW BUS DRIVER?

Yeah, but I feel really bad for her, because she has a really bad name. It’s MISS DIRTY. That’s a REALLY bad name to have. Well, actually, I guess it’s not so bad. It’s kind of pretty if you just say it—misterdee! But then if you think about what it means? Well, it’s a pretty bad name, so I feel really bad for her.

SO, IF YOU THINK SOMEONE HAS A BAD NAME, SHOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING TO THEM ABOUT IT?
No, because that would hurt their feelings. Just pretend you didn’t notice.

WHAT IF YOU SAID, “HEY, THAT’S A REALLY NEAT NAME!”
Sure. You could do that. It would probably make them feel good.

BUT ISN’T THAT A LIE?
Sometimes there’s such a thing as a good lie.

WHAT’S A GOOD LIE? LIKE, IF SOMEONE ASKS, “DOES MY BUTT LOOK REALLY BIG IN THESE PANTS?” DO YOU SAY, “NO WAY”?
Pretty much. Yup.

CAN YOU GIVE YOUR OWN EXAMPLE OF A GOOD LIE?
Like, maybe if someone’s really naughty, you tell them, “Hey, there! You do a really good job following the rules!”

HONEY, DO YOU KNOW WHAT SARCASM IS?
Nope.

I can’t count how many times someone’s called my first-grader a little Buddha. He’s an insightful little fart, often boiling down life’s tough stuff into the simplest terms from the backseat of my Hyundai. And he’s always unusually happy, even when his nose is bleeding like a scene from the Colosseum. One could argue that all first-graders have a happy nature, but that’s simply not true. I know, because my sixth-grader came out of the womb with her cup already half empty. (Boy, did THAT hurt. Rimshot!)

As a result of the constant flow of weird and wonderful things that come out of my son’s mouth, something awful happened: I became One of Those Annoying Moms Who Quotes Verbatim Conversations with Her Child on Facebook, like this one:

“Mom, I love you more than you love me.”
“Impossible. I love you times infinity.”
“Well, I love you times googol.”
Then, after much back and forth about I LOVE YOU googolplex, googolplex plus one, infinity plus infinity, he says, “Just kidding. I actually only love you about 10 percent.”

And this one:

“Mom, I think sometimes it’s better to be a kid than a grownup, because if you’re a kid and you punch someone, you just get in trouble. If you’re a grownup…JAIL.”

And this picture:

With this caption:

“I think that guy really wants you to honk at him. It says, ‘Big Horn’ right there on the back, Mom.”

Look, I’m not saying he’s a total wizard, but he’s kind of growing on you, right?And sometimes he does make some amazing observations, about which I post things like this:

Playing a silly game of “what’s your favorite…” at bedtime, I asked my son, “What’s your favorite booger?” He said, “The not-bloody ones.” And when I laughed, he said, very seriously, “I’m not kidding. They’re gross. The blood tastes so bad on the booger!”

Indeed.

I could go on, but I won’t, because starting today, I’m just going to put the virtual microphone right under his chain. Today, Bitty Buddha wisdom, as dispensed to me from the back of my Hyundai and repeated to me for transcription when we got home–because he thought “we should probably put that on Google, to help people.”

I agree. Without further adieu…

HOW AND WHY TO MAKE A MEAN PERSON YOUR FRIEND

Hello, everybody. This is how you make a mean person into your friend. The reason you want to make them into your friend is because it’s hard to make friends with people who are mean. It’s really hard, because you think they’re so mean. That’s what most people think, so then the mean person doesn’t get friends, and they become sad. Try to make friends with them, so you don’t get hurt. But be careful, so you don’t get hit. These are the instructions:

First, you need to make friends with them.

Then, you need to help them become good, because friends normally obey each other and like to have fun, so he might obey you and be nice and be a good person.

Also, this is all how it started. Because I had a bloody nose at school, because another boy slapped me in the nose on accident. We were playing cops and robbers. He gets in a LOT of mischief almost every day. After the nosebleed, since I didn’t want to lose him as a friend—because it’s hard to make friends with people that are naughty—I had to make him better. I plan to stay friends with him so I can try to do that.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Tag: Bitty Buddha

Bitty Buddha 101: What to Do When You Meet Someone with a Bad Name (from the Momplex Blog archive)

Bitty Buddha 101: How (and Why) to Make a Mean Person Your Friend (from the Momplex Blog archive)