Hypocritical Cupcakes

This is perhaps the busiest week birthday-wise in our family, with three to celebrate. Two of those birthdays happen to be two of my own kiddies, and with happy hearts they both took cupcakes to share with their school classes yesterday.

Both of them came out of class positively grouchy. In fact, B said, "You know the green monster on Sesame Street?"

"You mean Oscar the Grouch?"

"Yeah. I think I was really grouchy today."

Hmm.

After a bit of prodding, he finally told me he wasn't too happy with his classmates that day. Apparently he noticed kids who normally don't pay much attention to him were trying to play and talk with him at recess. He said they yelled if they didn't get the ring (decoration on the cupcakes) they wanted, and after a while they were just giving him a headache.

Things didn't seem to go much better for M. She came out of school, the corners of her lips turned downward.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She handed me the bag which contained the cupcakes...it was empty. There should have been about nine left, and that's if every one of the kids showed up at class that day.

M's supposed friend had grabbed the bag the moment they got out of class and yelled out to the kids, "Who wants another cupcake?" They were gone in moments, and M didn't even get to give a sweet little girl who wasn't in her class a cupcake. She was so upset. Frankly, so was I. A part of me wanted to go find this "friend" and have a good talk with her, then make her pay me for all the cupcakes she essentially stole from us.

As you can see, I was not a happy camper. M is talking about never doing cupcakes on her birthday again, and I'm not sure B will want to as well. Yet, there were lessons to be learned. B now knows there are people out there who will pretend to be your friend when it looks like they can get something from you (he honestly came up with that on his own). M is in the process of learning she needs to stand up for herself with her friends. Sometimes she allows their opinions and actions to overrule what she knows to be right and fair.

Never easy lessons, but both necessary. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see if we still do cupcakes for either one next year.