Reality

Isn't it funny how we make up stories in our head about people? I have a very bad habit of doing that. When my girls were younger I had a strange situation with a mother of one of Avery's friends. I think Avery was in first or second grade and she had made friends with a particularly spoiled little girl. At one point Avery was invited over to the little girl's house for a play date and I allowed her to go. Mark and I dropped Avery off and explained that we were running to a local nursery to look at some plants, but just in case they needed us I gave the Mom my cell phone number. We were literally there 15 minutes and my phone rang. The Mom told me to come get Avery because the girls were not getting along.

Here is the thing, Avery is the most tender hearted and sensitive person and the fact that she was being tossed out of someone's home really upset me. What the heck had she done? Once we arrived at the home to pick her, Avery was telling us she did not want to leave, and the Mom was giving her the bums rush out the door. I was having a hard time understanding what was going on. When we got on the road, I started asking Avery questions about what had happened, which she had a hard time with because everyone was acting like she had done something wrong, but she did not know what it was she had done. As we worked our way through the questions, we realized that the little girl had been very bossy and mean towards Avery and then pulled her Mom aside and told her she did not want to play with Avery anymore and that's when the Mom called us to come get her. All this was done behind closed doors and Avery had no idea we were coming to get her or even why.

The best part of this is that for the remainder of the school year, when I would see the Mom at the school, she would turn her head and act like she did not see me. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen. Even though I knew we had done nothing wrong, I felt anxiety and guilt every time I saw her. One day, one of the other Mom's that is a neighbor of spoiled, bossy girl's mom pulled me aside to tell me about the day she saw the play date unfold from her front porch. Apparently, the little girl was yelling at Avery and making her run behind her as she drove her battery operated car. When Avery took a shot at driving the car the little girl screamed at Avery that she was trying to kill her. The neighbor went on to say that that is when spoiled bossy girl's Mom called me.

After that my reality changed. I no longer looked at her with guilt and anxiety when I saw the mom. I realized that there was something not quite right with this family and that I did not need to waste good old fashioned guilt or shame on them. It was a real reality check. Fast forward to a year or so ago when I decide that a parent of a girl that Aly was no longer friends with was ignoring me. She actually seemed to be avoiding me. I found myself thinking "what the heck is going on?" All this time I have built this case up in my head of how this parent does not like me and each time I saw her I would do my best to act like I did not see her so that I could avoid the awkward confrontation or conversation. Until last night when she walked right up to me at a meeting for the school play and said "Ragen, did you change your email, I keep sending you emails and they keep coming back to me?" Huh? I had done it again, I had written a drama in my head and based it on fiction and took it as the truth. I hope that I have finally learned my lesson to face these awkward situations head on. Reality is so much easier to deal with than fiction and quite honestly it seems to be much less dramatic.