We received a call this past week from someone at school about Ev’s behavior. He was spitting or something like that from the top of a stairway and it sounded down right horrible. Why would he do something like that? Why would they make a point of calling us to tell us that rather than just doing a detention thing? Apparently, this is the way they do things in that grade. Oddly enough, the caller went on to tell us that Ev was one of three boys jockeying for the position of alpha male and this was not unexpected of those vying for such things. Why they felt the need to frame the discussion in the context of a social framework I'm not sure. Perhaps they wanted us to know that they had seen this sort of thing before and the conclusions were always the same. The players differed, the acts were more or less gratuitous, but the call to the parents was an important component in the rehabilitation of the student. I do hope that Nancy struck just the right tone in expressing her abject horror and disbelief when speaking to the school. You can never be too politically correct in these types of situations when dealing with public school officials. They want to hear it in your voice.

I wanted to be sure that when I spoke to Ev about it that I did not attach any more significance to the event than was warranted. Besides, who doesn't want their son to be the alpha male if he has otherwise earned the right to occupy that position amongst his peers. Is it not the Johnny-Be-Good equivalent of someone running for class president? Do they not accrue the same benefits, i.e., babes, best spot in the cafeteria at lunchtime, everyone following their lead (if you're not the lead dog, the view is always the same), and does this not position him well for the rest of the school year? The answer is probably yes to all of the above. Maybe it's our job as parents to guide them through the miss-manners-maze and to protect them from themselves when and where necessary. My parting message to him was that this sort of behavior was not appropriate and certainly not anything that I ever did or even considered when I was in school. Then again, I never thought twice about wanting to be the alpha male when I was in school. I left the alpha male part out of the discussion when speaking to him. That was probably the appropriate thing to do. He denied everything of course.