Star Wars Returns

The parents at Tae Kwon Do are already amused with Lastborn's antics. Many is the time I have wanted to crawl under my chair and hide so they wouldn't all look at me laughing when he is putting on a performance. So this Wednesday, was not as bad as it could have been had I not been so conditioned to his behavior.

The object of the game:

• One child was the tagger.
• The game progresses like tag, but when a child is tagged, they are supposed to jump into a fighting stance and count to ten.
• Once they complete their count, they go back to the game.
• The teacher lets each tagger go for a few minutes and then picks another tagger.

Probably a bit much for the 3, 4 and 5 year olds in the class.

So she picks a tagger and they all start running. Eddie begins to sing the Darth Vader's theme at the top of his lungs while weilding an imaginary light sabre. At one point, he even stops running in front of a heavy bag and begins to slash it fiercly with said imaginary light sabre. The whole time doot-doot-doing the Darth Vader theme.

When purple belt boy completes his turn, teacher asks him to pick the next tagger and of course, he picks Lastborn. The kids start running. Eddie starts running still humming the Darth Vader theme. The imaginary light sabre is still in his hand. He finally figures out (due to much shouting and coaching) that he is the tagger and begins to chase his first victim. But he doesn't tag in a conventional way, because Lastborn is not a conventional child. No. Instead, he strikes the child with his imaginary light sabre. In the hustle, the child tips over and falls on he floor. Then Lastborn stands over him delivering repeated strokes with the imaginary light sabre while the parents in the parent's room are damaging their ribs laughing.

It was a sight. The whole thing had a rather maniacle tone.

Now, flash back to many months ago when this same teacher was lecturing the class on the life skill of the month, discipline. She figured that instead of defining the word for them, she would interact with the group of 3, 4, and 5 year olds and give them a chance to shine. So she asked the group of 15 preschoolers, "Do any of you know what the word discipline means?" There were many answers, none quite on the mark, like being nice to my sister, helping my mother. The teacher was able to redirect them into something useful like being nice to my sister even when she isn't very nice to me or helping my mother with chores even when I would rather watch TV. But Lastborn (remember unconventional) stumped her. His response?

"I won't kill anyone?"

Is there anywhere I can hide?

So all this is rushing back to me as my child stands over this poor 4 year old boy singing doot-doot-do, doot-do-do, doot-do-do.