E-RANTS AND INSIGHTS

After all, how often does one chance upon a love-scorned 5th grader???

It was my first time babysitting him and after feeling me out during the first couple of hours, at some point he decided I was okay. That's when he confided in me and gave me all the business. I knew elementary school was rough but technology and pop-culture has morphed these times of social development into a straight up after-school special. He had a girlfriend for a whole year and she dumped him for a popular new boy. Poor guy was the last to know too. The popular boy text messaged him on Saturday that he couldn't wait for Monday. When he replied with "Why?" he got no answer. So, of course, on Monday he found out homegirl was throwing him the deuces.

As we were cleaning up his playroom, we kept finding things he had either lost or forgotten about. Of course, I made him throw out 65% of what we found. I guess he had caught the purging spirit because we started coming up on some ex-girl leftovers. She left her CD player (which he kept), some teeny-bopper magazines (which he ripped up), and her Miley Cyrus point card. Apparently, she loves Miley Cyrus and had racked up a whole bunch of points and as he put it "has probably lost her mind looking for this thing." He asked if he could do something he's always wanted to do. "You mean return it to her?" I asked jokingly. "No." "You can't burn anything. No fire." "I don't want to." "What then?" "Be right back!"

That boy came back with a pair of scissors and went to TOWN on that Miley Cyrus card! I was too tickled, I just started laughing. I know that was a time to teach forgiveness and whatnot but my laughter was evidence of a depleted resource of maturity.

He has some radio songs on his cell phone and after time passed played some of them. They were kid-friendly except this one he was passionately singing with-- T-Pain's "Chopped and Screwed". Normally, I would have told him to turn it off but I didn't. I totally got it.