Revenge

Today some obnoxious little 10-yr-old girls decided to pick on Andrew during his paper route. "Hey, paper boy, give us a paper." "Hey, paper boy, what are you doing out today?" "Hey, paper boy, ..." and other stinky little-kid type of mouthiness designed to make the other kid feel like he's 3" tall.

Andrew chose not to respond in kind. He smiled and waved cheerily at them. The response from the brats was "Hey, paper boy, aren't you gonna talk to us?" and "Hey, paper boy, is that all you're gonna do?" He kept a nice smile on his face and just kept walking along his route, delivering the papers, showing no sign whatsoever of being perturbed with their attempts to belittle him.

And, boy oh boy, did that ever annoy those little girls!

When I picked him up, he related the tale with relish. He said their words did make him feel bad. No logical reason for it, but that was their intent, and it wasn't wholly ineffective. But he didn't want to retaliate and be ugly and stoop to their level of meanness. Nevertheless, it gave him much pleasure to see how irritated the girls were with his response. If he'd snapped at them or teased back, they would've been pleased. Nothing could've bugged them more than his smile and friendly wave.

I told him how proud I was of him. He's feeling very grown up these days. He needs to shave now and then. And he turned in his 1040 form with a check for his Social Security taxes. And he responded in a very mature way to some little twerps. What a grown-up!