Shocker over my little boy’s vulgar language

There are times when I wish I could clone myself because there are so many demands on my time and resources.

Last Friday was closing day for Maingi and Shiro insisted that we go together. I told her that I had many things to do in the office, that I also wanted to interview a number of people for our side business.

‘‘How can you be interviewing people? I thought we agreed that my sister will take over?” she asked. Truth be told, I do not want any relatives near the shop let alone Shiro’s sister.

I have spotted her in a number of pubs here in Nairobi with rather suspicious looking characters.

This was not the time to tell Shiro about that, so I told her: “ I am looking at all options and especially because we will have to accommodate your sister and you have already pointed out how squashed our living quarters are.”

She started to raise some objections so I said, ‘‘Time is running out, let us go to school. We can discuss later.”

On our way to school Maingi was very excited, talking about his teacher and classmates. I feigned enthusiasm, thinking of how fast I needed to go in, make a technical appearance and be in the office by 10am.

At the school one would have thought we were at a presidential event; what with all the decorations, public address systems and well-dressed ushers. After signing the visitor’s book one of the ushers presented us with what she called the Maingi’s Pack, detailing the day’s programme.

My eyes quickly scanned the programme only to realise that it was scheduled to end at 2 pm. What was I to do? I had not even informed the boss that I was away. I told Shiro, ‘‘babes, I do not think I can stay for the whole event. I must get back to the office.’’

She gave me a cold stare and said, ‘‘No way! I asked you on Monday and you told me that you had cleared your schedule and would be here all the time; so quit lying.” I had clearly forgotten about that conversation so I decided to do some damage control with the boss. I stepped aside and called him.

I gave him a sob story about how my son had been crying all week long demanding my attendance and how I had been shocked to discover how long the programme was.

Response stunned me

My boss’ response stunned me. He told me not to ever miss out on such important occasions. ‘‘I have one or two documents that you need to prepare but you can pop in tomorrow and work on them,” he concluded.

On one hand I was relieved that he was understanding, on the other hand I was a bit miffed that I would have to come into the office on Saturday.

The day was not too bad, it was actually tolerable. We started off with a lecture by a child psychologist who spent about half an hour telling us how important it is to do homework with our children and how we must affirm them always. We then had one-on-one sessions with Maingi’s teachers who showed us his schoolwork and said that he held a lot of promise.

His schoolwork had nothing to talk about, just lots of scribbles and splashes of paint; but if the teachers thought it was okay who am I to argue? At the last stop the class teacher told us that she wanted to talk to us privately and ushered us into an office. I was shocked by this turn of events.

She seemed embarrassed as she said, ‘‘Your son is very good in class but he has this habit of abusing his classmates using very vulgar words in his mother tongue, I cannot even repeat them.”

I sat quietly as she said, ‘‘you need to find out where he is picking this language from. Is it from his nanny or peers? You must fix it. If he does not stop this habit we might consider expelling him.” I was lost for words.