The Attack

These first two pictures are of Cade and Carter in their Halloween costumes in 2003.

Whenever the school calls I always cringe. It could mean one of three things none of which are ever good:
1- Someone is hurt - usually while playing football
2- Someone is sick - come pick them up
or 3- Someone is in trouble.
So today when the phone rang and I saw the caller ID said Dawson and the kids were already home I was suspicious. It was Carter's teacher, Ms. Leavitt. She is exactly what you picture a kindergarten teacher to be, sweet, enthusiastic, positive about everything and she can make anything seem like it is just the most wonderful thing ever. She started out the conversation by saying, "We just love having Carter in our class! He is such a leader." Now I was really suspicious, I doubted she was calling me on a Friday afternoon to tell me how wonderful Carter is. Then came the part I was dreading: "HOWEVER, there was an INCIDENT today I need to discuss with you." I prepared myself for the worst.
To back track a little - my boys, Chris included, LOVE old WW 2 movies. Cade and Carter have become obsessed with WW 2 lately. They watch old war movies, play out elaborate battles with their army men, check out library books about war, anything to do with WW 2 they are all into. We have several WW 2 movies on our DVR that the boys watch repeatedly. I didn't think it was much of a problem, they could be obsessed with worse things, that is until today.
So back to Ms. Leavitt's call - Apparently the part about Carter being "such a leader among his friends" meant that he got all the kindergarten boys together to play World War 2. Some of the kids weren't too sure about the details of the war so Carter filled them in. He explained that they were going to fight people with "slanty eyes and dark hair who bombed the United States." He explained to all the boys that we don't like these people because they are bad guys. He also told them that his dad is in the military and wants to bomb and kill all the people with slanty eyes. (Not the first lie Carter has told at school - a few months ago he had his whole class convinced we have an elevator in our house!) Needless to say by now I was dying on the phone. Poor Ms. Leavitt is trying to tell me all this so nicely. She says, "Do you know where he got any of these ideas? Maybe he overheard your husband say something about his service?" Now I start cracking up on the phone. I tell her Chris is not in the military and our family is not prejudice at all. He has been watching a lot of WW 2 movies with his dad and brother lately and probably got the ideas from that.
So it gets better. After Carter educated everyone on the details of the enemy they ran around the playground with make believe guns looking for enemies. There are a couple little oriental kids in kindergarten that they hunted down and chased around the playground yelling and shooting at until a teacher stopped them!
The class spent the rest of the day discussing differences and how America is a "melting pot." They talked about how everyone has things that are different and unique to them and how that doesn't make them bad or our enemies! We have to be accepting of all kinds of people. So we are suppose to continue discussing these things with Carter over the weekend and how it's inappropriate for him to chase and shoot the Japanese kids at school, even if they did bomb the US. Should go over well, especially since even now as I'm writing this the boys are down stairs watching Band of Brothers (edited of course). Parent teacher conference should be interesting next week. Hopefully Chris doesn't get us kicked out of school with all the prejudices he acquired in his military days.