It happened my friends. Two days ago during the morning drop off, it happened.

I embarrassed my guy in front of his friends. *sigh*

Shall I tell you first about what happened? Or about the achy heart and troubled stomach that I felt immediately after it happened?

*sigh*

Not to mention the reddest of reds that swelled up into my cheeks.

You see, as the weather around here is growing nicer and warmer, more moms are coming back to the first-grade line to see their children off in the morning, instead of dropping them off at the front door.  Many of these moms are my friends, some of whom I haven’t visited with in a while because who wants to stand around fighting biting wind and single digit temps, after all?

Tuesday morning as Logan and I approached his line, there I saw a friend of mine who had borrowed my copy of The Hunger Games a long time ago and had brought it to return to me. I gathered it up and we began chit chatting about second grade and teachers, etc…All the while, I have my arm around Logan, but anyone who has seen me talk, knows I move around a lot, not excessively, but enough, and through said movement, I managed to poke Logan in the forehead with the corner of the book!  He grimaced, reached for the spot of impact and whined, “Ooooww! That hurt, Mom!”

So, I hugged him and apologized and rubbed the spot, while still trying to be engaged in conversation with this girl.

Before I realized it, the lines were starting to move, so I quickly tried to say good bye to the girl I was talking with. I like to to walk down the hill to the first-grade entrance and see Logan off there – not every parent does this, just a few, so I continued to walk by him as the lines progressed. Well, then, I noticed another girlfriend of mine whom I really have not seen in the morning in ages. So, what do I do, but start frantically waving at her while incorporating a little skip in my step-both to acknowledge my excitement in seeing her, but then also to ensure that she saw me!

I learned at that point the importance of keeping my eyes in front of me when walking in a line of children instead of the opposite. This lesson was learned immediately upon my walking into the little girl in front of us.  If I hadn’t been galavanting behind me, I would have seen that the line in front of me had almost come to a complete stop.

Oh my. I freaked out and apologized to the little girl and kind of awkwardly tried to make fun of myself which I realized made it worse because first-graders are sometimes hard to win-over with meek attempts at adult-clumsiness humor.

Well, I looked down at Logan as the line began moving again to see if he was ok. And he wouldn’t look up at me. He just kept looking straight ahead, stone-faced.

“Logan,” I said, kind-off desperately, but in a whisper. “Did I embarrass you? I’m so sorry!”

Nothing. He didn’t say anything. We just kept walking down the hill.

“I hope you have a great day, buddy! I love you!” I tried.

Nothing…well, OK. Maybe a grunt.

Then as we got really close to the doors and he would have to go inside, I asked him if I could please just get a smile from him before we said good bye. He did manage a curve of the lips, but it was fake.

*sigh*

I hugged him and reminded him of my love and my wishes for him to have a good day and that was it. Inside the doors he went and I walked back up the hill. Alone. Embarrassed. Heavy-hearted.

Other adults saw me. I know they did!

Well, I got back in the car and on my drive home I saw the friend who I was so desperately trying to wave at in the first place.  I pulled over and told that it had happened. I embarrassed my child. She was compassionate and reassuring to my dilemma, yet cautioned me that it wouldn’t be the last time it happens. In fact, as rule of parenting, its bound to get worse.

She’s right, though.

And, now that I think about it even more, I must say that I’m grateful God gave me boys because being of the female species myself, I know that a girl would have handled the whole thing way worse. I bet you that Logan went into school, began hob-nobbing with his buddies and forgot all about it. In my mind, I felt like I needed to have a special 30-minute talk with him after school about his feelings and did my dumb actions bother him all day. Well, I’m learning that with boys, they are much better at letting the little things roll off. I’m glad this was one of the little things. Maybe my pride was more injured than his, I mean really, what do I think the morning is, social hour? Sheesh!