After school on Friday, Milhouse met us at the big snow pile in the school parking lot. I meet my kids there every day at 3:20 for the walk home and we spend the next 20 minutes talking about their day and how things went and generally ‘catching up’.
As we walked, Milhouse remarked that it was a very long distance and were we there yet? and how much longer? and I started to get an idea of what I was in for in the coming hours.
Later, the kids mentioned to me that Milhouse normally takes a taxi to school – though he lives even closer to it than we do. Let’s just say that my kids better not get any ideas because their allowance does not stretch anywhere NEAR to the point of them affording them that kind of ‘luxury’ and unless their legs actually fall off of their bodies I’ll be dragging them on that daily walk.
*ahem*
As we approached home, Milhouse began asserting that he and Middle One would be “going sledding right away!” and Middle One kept saying, “Nah, I don’t want to.” I gently prodded Middle One and whispered that it wouldn’t kill him to take his friend over to the hill for a while after we all ate a snack.
Milhouse refused to take off his snowpants because he was totally determined to get to the hill ASAP. Middle One kept saying things like, “Oh, you can go on your own! I’ll stay home. I don’t want to go sledding.”
In the end, they went sledding for about 20 seconds.
Arriving back, Milhouse spent much of his time inspecting our house and declaring it “HUGE!” (which is amusing in and of itself) and then told me that my kids are “SPOILED!” because we buy large jugs of bottled water and place them on a dispenser.
(We do this because I do not believe children should drink chlorine or have fluoride in their water. You can argue this with me for days and I will not change my mind so, hey, let’s just agree to disagree, ok?)
For much of the evening, Middle One would assert that he didn’t want to do whatever Milhouse did and, instead, felt it would be okay if, as I mentioned, Milhouse went off on his own to sled or check out his room or wander aimlessly around our (gigantic) house or, y’know, checked out the neighbourhood or something.
Oldest One and I both reminded him (repeatedly) that guests generally aren’t left to their own devices for more than a few minutes. He seemed suspicious of this advice.
Milhouse was curious about many of our family routines – from “Pizza and Movie Nights” on Friday (tradition) to whether or not I let the kids drink pop every day (no) to when, exactly, the kids would be allowed to call me ‘Mom’ (any time they like – it’s just Oldest One who prefers Violet or “Vio-Mom”) and, of course, the infamous ‘cage’ question.
He also asserted that we could have a brand new “special day” of the week that we’d call “Milhouse Day” and it would feature him as part of the family.
Then he invited all of us – including me and Coffee – to his birthday which is in a few months.
And then he attempted to invite himself along to our swimming-outing tonight and to Sunday ice skate shopping and, oh hell, maybe he could just move in forever and be our fourth kid?
At one point he grabbed Oldest One, asked if he could call him by a derivative of his actual name, asserted that Oldest One was now HIS big brother too, and then hugged him like his life depended on it.
Oldest One, with a dry tone, looked at me and remarked, “Hey, remember Chubby Huggs from the Get Fuzzy comics?” and caused me to laugh rather appreciatively because, my god, the kid IS just like that.
I pried Milhouse off of Oldest One.
In the course of a few hours, Milhouse tackled Middle One, groined him a few times, begged (literally, “I’ll do ANYTHING! Pleeeeeeeeeeease!”) for attention, made about 800 Mii characters on the Wii (one for each of his, apparently very large, family), shoved Little One, insisted that the pizza we made was actually delivered (it wasn’t, but it WAS “Delissio” so that cracked me up) and totally drove me up the wall.
Add in the constant sniffling and his repeated, “I’m allergic to..” and his VERY VERY LOUD VOICE.. and I was thrilled when Coffee came home so I could go and hide in the office for a while.
Happily, for the adults at least, Milhouse cannot sleep over at our house (due to those aforementioned allergies-to-everything) and thus all extended visits will involve Middle One at HIS house. And the kids are not yet old enough to walk to each other’s homes without parent escorts or a car ride (in the freezing cold weather) so there’s no chance of The ‘House showing up at random moments.
I am not a fan of Milhouse in the slightest – but, thankfully, he’s not MY best friend. And if Middle One is happy and the friendship is healthy, I’m not going to complain to HIM. Just you…
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There’s a good chance Milhouse is just a “starter” friend. Your kids are new at the school, and when fresh meat shows up, the kids who don’t have good/secure places in the social hierarchy tend to glom on to the new kids and try to make friends with them, since the new kids don’t yet know what the glommers’ social status is (usually rather low…)
As you witnessed, this status isn’t without reason, and usually, relatively quickly, kids will determine that a) glommers are weird, needy, and annoying (sounds like MO is already learning that), and b) associating with glommers like Milhouse will have consequences with the other kids at school. Unless MO wants to be tarred with Milhouse’s social status (kiss of death), he needs to discard him, find cooler friends, and treat Milhouse the way the other kids do. (Kids are a primo example of survival of the fittest…)
Certainly, there are kids who are social with everyone, and a few are even charismatic enough to get away with doing, saying, and associating with whomever they want (like the Oldest One, I suspect). However, in general, social hierarchical placement is pretty controlled, so I don’t hold out a lot of hope for poor old Milhouse. :)
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I am in complete agreement with Melle. It sucks but it’s true. Kids are cruel. I was lucky in that even though I should have been at the bottom of the social scale what with the gimp status and all (c’mon people, it was the 70′s, that’s the way it was), I was lucky enough to have really cool friends who help me bridge the gap to the cool side, even when others tried to knock me back down. Should middle one try to improve the situation for Millhouse? Well, he can try, but until he has more friends it’s too early for that, and from the sounds of it, the Millster might be too far gone. And I agree that it kinda sounds like MO is already not too fond of him. Maybe he needs you to give him an out. But it’s not all bad, don’t worry about the Millhouses of the world. One of them from my gradeschool is now a Cardiovascular Surgeon. Yeah, so umm…he’ll be fine.
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I’m sorry, but I think we should worry about the Millhouses of the world. Some end up Cardivascular Surgeons, some end up shooting people from bell towers.
It seems to me that in life, you’re always going to have to deal with difficult and annoying people. Maybe it’s better that the Middle One learn how to treat them with kindness and patience now. Besides, if Middle One is the social butterfly he seems to be, it’s unlikely that the glommer will make him a social leper by association.
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You might want to check out HIS parents and HIS house before sending your kid(s) there. Something created this little Woody Allen creature. Oy.
And then MAYBE your team will calm him and help him feel less anxious after he gets used to your HUGE house and COOL rules and traditions, etc.
And maybe they’ll all just get along just fine…One can hope.
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I think one important note is that the kids are in grade 2. They’re little. They’re barely out of pull-ups.
And I’ll never tell my kids who they can and cannot be friends with – unless there’s a really good reason for it.
Nerdy and dorky are not in that category. Even if he drives me nuts.
Having said that, I do believe that Melle is right on my kids being new to the school and thus easy pickin’s for the nerdy and dorky.
But really, and most importantly, Milhouse is… in grade 2. He has a lot of life stuff to learn about life, friendship, school and general conduct in the world.
I will absolutely NOT let Middle One know that I feel his new BFF is a major dingus. I’ll save those eye-rolling moments for Coffee.
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