Sally’s kindergarten teacher, Miss Ruffin, writes in her Agenda Book each day and I initial the entries and/or respond to her reports. Sally’s usually much better behaved for strangers than she is for us, so I never worry about her at school or church. Then one day she got what we decided after some negotiation was a "straight-across" face, which is less bad than a "frowny" face.
The accompanying note was tantalizingly generic, and all my careful, extensive questioning elicited a cliched denial ("oh, that must have been a mistake"), pleas to not tell Daddy and finally, the semi-confession that she and another girl had been tickling Mickey during rug time, just pre-dismissal. Did they make him cry? Did the teacher ask them to stop and they didn’t? Were they hurting him? "Oh no, he liked it," she was sure.
I repeated the story to my mom and a couple friends and Auntie Liz. It was highly instructive to me how each woman reacted. Someone (who shall remain nameless) was sure Sally was lying and that kids are just like that. Okay, so I didn’t really believe her either. But she was so adamant, and the note so unexpansive, that I told her we wouldn’t worry about it anymore this time, but if it happened again, she’d have to move her butterfly back two spaces on her garden chart.
The next day a triumphant Sally climbed into the minivan brandishing her agenda book and her new treasure-box guilt-loot and declaring the matter all explained. Miss Ruffin’s note confirmed that Sally was completely innocent, and in her complete innocence, she didn’t even begin to exploit the regret we all felt at not having believed her from the beginning.
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