Boo Boo's Retrospective

            I remember the day clearly enough, considering it’s been a few years now. We always had problems with Lionel running away, but each and every time he would never truly tell me what was wrong. Until that day of course, that day we finally connected. We’ve always been somewhat distant since then, but I will never forget the day Lionel finally opened up to me.

At the beginning of the day I recall talking to Mrs. Snell and Sandra, though the details of our conversation are a bit fuzzy. I told them of the numerous times Lionel has run away and his refusal to give explanations as to why. Once they told me Lionel was down at the dinghy, I knew I had to try and reach out to him one more time.

As I walked towards the dinghy, a thought came to me to try a different approach than the previous, “Lionel, why are you running? Promise you won’t do it again? For mommy?” This time I thought that maybe I should attempt to talk to him on his terms, in this case maybe some ship speak. I approached him, telling him I was an admiral, and when he tried to deny that, I put my index finger and thumb together and made a sort of call, telling him that was a secret call only us admirals could hear. That got his attention.

Once he was slightly willing to talk, I went back to the old approach, but he kept trying to revert back to ship speak. Once I firmly asked him why he was running away, he threw his Uncle Webb’s goggles into the lake. Then I gave him the key chain, knowing he was going to throw it, but I figured it might help get his frustrations out. To my luck I was right, and he finally started to cry.

I immediately sat with him and comforted him; let him know everything was ok. That’s when he finally opened up and told me why he was so upset; something he had heard. He overheard Sandra call his father a kike. This absolutely astonished me; both that Sandra had said such things and Lionel understood what it meant enough to be upset. “Or maybe he didn’t”, I had thought to myself, which lead me to ask him what it meant. Lionel told me a kike was one of those toys attached to a string that you fly up in the sky. I felt relieved, and told Lionel that that wasn’t too much of a bad thing. Once he was feeling better, we raced back to the house, and I let him win, to make sure he felt that he was on top once again.