Stephen’s first day of kindergarten and first day riding the bus with his sister. I want to warn him that the world is a cruel place for someone like him. He is handsome at five years old. Not just cute, but handsome. He is smart. At the Open House at his school, the other parents were marvelling at the fact that he is reading already. And not just words, but pretty complex sentences. And not just reading them, but understanding them.
He also has an almost cavalier disregard for other people when there is something he wants. Combine that with a pretty bad and sudden temper and you have a recipe for potential disaster.
I want to tell him that he is different from the other kids and because of that they are going to dislike him. Enough will like him because the kid is just so charismatic, but there will always be that one kid who will find how to push his buttons and set him off.
I want to tell him that there will be times of extreme and utter boredom in a classroom filled with people who can’t keep up with him. I was there and while my parents knew, they also knew that there was nothing they would be able to do about it.
I want to warn him about a bunch of things, but I know that I can’t because I don’t want him to be afraid of life. There are a lot of areas where he is like me and I can foresee a lot of the misery that I went through being his future, but I know that if someone (especially my dad) told me what life was going to me like I would have disregarded them and wouldn’t have changed a bit. As stubborn as he is, I can see him doing the same thing.
I know that this is going to be a hard day for me. The first of many, but there’s nothing that I can do about it.