Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: And what else starts with “B,” class?

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Mike Peterson Published: January 14, 2012 1 minute 2 comments

It's been a week of painful parental flashbacks at Baby Blues, which is part of the strip's appeal, of course. For those with young kids, the message is "You are not alone." For those of us whose kids are grown and gone, the message is, "Thanks for reminding me."

As Zoe says, it all comes with the territory, but the first wave of playground relationship terrorism hit our family in Montessori school, and the little terrorist wasn't named Briana but Brishen.

Only the names change, never the games.

The thing is, until your kids head off to preschool, you've been able to stand by and control and correct things. Then comes the time when you have to turn them loose to deal with each other and that's when the fun begins.

"Brishen is my best friend!"

"Oh?"

"Yes, because I let her have the swing."

"Dude, she's playing you." (I didn't actually say this. I just said "Oh" again, but in a more defeated tone.)

In Baby Blues, the back-and-forth only went on for a week, but we managed to keep the "I'm her best friend" and "I'm not her best friend anymore" drama alive for quite a long time, after which I would assume the school director stepped in, because little girls like Brishen are not often self-correcting.

Brishen would be about 36 years old today and is probably concentrating her manipulative powers on making one special person's life miserable, but she's likely got plenty of her old mojo left and I'm sure she's still managing to spread the joy around at the PTA, if on no other grownup playground.

My older son was spared much of this, since, at his preschool, there were 12 kids in his class and 10 of them were girls. So he and Warren stayed completely out of it all and let them vivisect each other.

It's easy to look back on the Brishens with a combination of scorn and horror, and the realization that most of them aren't going to outgrow it, but I did finally figure it out one day, at an early enough stage in my life that, despite still being in the midst of it all, I began to feel a little more pity than contempt, and certainly more pity than fear.

The story is well-told here and, since I can't improve on the narrative, I'll invite you to click instead.

On the other hand, understanding why they act like that doesn't wipe out the damage they do.