Witnessing
Here's a funny story from when my kids were younger.
Back when I'd first moved to Ottawa and my kids were in kindergarten, grade two and grade three, and I'd just started meeting other moms at the school playground, I had one of those socially awkward/bourgeoise crisis moments that really make you want to homeschool.
Or just lock your kids in a closet until they're old enough to move out and save you any further embarassment in the neighbourhood.
My kids have never really been exposed to religion in any kind of formal way - I'd always meant to read Bible stories to them so they'd have a clue as to why everybody's so mad all the time, but only got as far as the "Chronicles of Narnia". A series which, by the way, requires some pretty heavy censoring. It's important to be able to scan ahead while reading the books aloud so you can censor out whole passages involving "infidels", "darkies", and so on... Just so you know... (And the middle school my kids went to is at least 30% muslim, so... - and yeah - post 9/11 was awkward for the Principal - an American Democrat who really just wanted all the Christian parents writing in to the school imploring him to "DO SOMETHING!!" to STFU so he could focus on winning the city soccer finals.)
Anyway, one afternoon my two daughters were playing upstairs with a couple of little friends - little Jewish friends, as it were - and as I walked by the bottom of the stairs I heard one of my daughters saying in a dramatic voice, "And then? They put him on a tee. WITH NAILS!!" and I was like, "Holey Crap! They're talking to my JEWISH friend's kids about JESUS and she's due here to pick them up for HEBREW SCHOOL any minute! WHAT THE FUCK?!" I mean - Grr! Why me?! Why now?! Why Christ?! (And why "a tee"... Don't they know the word for "cross"... I've really got to get reading them some Bible stories...)
Anyway, as soon as my friend arrives, I'm like, "Look. I dunno where they got this from, but..." And told her what had happened. It turned out, thank CHRIST, that there was a little Pentecostal Proselytizer at school and she was filling everybody in on the perils? imperatives? niceties? of Christianity at recess.
Phew, eh?
And here I was worried I was in for some kind of rightwing fundamentalist Christian backlash from my kids for being a leftwing secular Humanist mother.
NOT that I'm out of the woods, yet. They're still in high school where all that nasty experimentation stuff that scares parents to death really starts in earnest.
And I still haven't read them any Bible stories...
