Terdbucket

Oh the "Kindergarten tales" I experience on Fridays at the lunch table with Kendall. I knew someday this one would come back to bite me in the backside, I just thought it'd be much later in life, not in kindergarten.

A couple years ago Kendall decided to start calling me "mama". Now if you're one of my siblings, you know how taboo it was to ever call my mom that. She hated it. Call her mom, mommy, mother, hot stuff, whatever, just do not call her mama. She said it sounded hillbillyish and she just hated the sound of it. And so, after I became a mom, I inherently learned to hate the name as well. One day, out of the blue, Kendall decided to start calling me mama. The more I protested, the more she used that name, despite my requests to be called hot stuff (just kidding, I mean mom). So one day I told her if she was going to call me mama, I was going to call her terdbucket. And so it was. She would call, "Mamaaaa!" And I'd politely answer, "yes terdbucket?" It took a few weeks, but eventually she stopped. Some of my friend's questioned my parenting approach but, whatever.

Now fast forward to the present day in the lunch room at Kendall's school. As Kendall was reaching into her lunch box, she asked me something and called me mama. She looked up as surprised as I was to hear her say that and we both just smiled. Then she turned to the rest of her class and smiling said, "My mom use to call me terdbucket if I called her mama." Unfortunately this was the one day that another mom decided to eat lunch with her child and was sitting right across from us. She sat up a little straighter and cocked her head a little to the side and gave it a little shake in disapproval or disgust. One kid piped up, "What is a terd?" Kendall was all too eager (and ready) with her reply. "It's poop", she said with a smile, quite pleased with the opportunity to use the word poop in a social setting and at the lunch table no less. Another kid chimed in, "So your mom called you a poop bucket?" Kendall - "Yep." One little girl - "I call my mom mama....but she doesn't call me poop bucket, she calls me cupcake." So in an effort to salvage some of my "not-getting-mother-of-the-year-award-yet-again" pride, I pulled out a mini size candy bar for Kendall and said so sweetly, "I brought you an extra treat!" To which she so sweetly replied, "No thanks mom, that's not very good for me." Nice, who's the mom again?

Well, she doesn't call me mama anymore....