Why James Bond Never Had Kids

As we arrive at Ian’s Sunday School classroom, his teacher says to us, ‘Hi! Ah…we need to have a talk about Ian.’

Have a talk? As a son and husband, this is one of those phrases that cause my stomach to drop. Good news is never preceded by ‘have a talk’, and it usually means I’ve done something wrong. Or stupid. Or both. Usually both. In this case, I assumed Ian had done something wrong – because I knew he had.

Kelly and I sing with the choir at the 8:00 and 9:30 services. We stay for the full 8:00 service, but head to the choir room after the anthem at 9:30. During the later service, Ian is in Sunday School, and his room is just down the hall from the choir room. This is when I spy on my son. Rarely do I get the chance to see Ian away from a controlled environment, so I like to see how he behaves when he knows thinks there’s no possible way for me to catch him.

Plus, I just love watching my son.

So, about twenty minutes before the end of class, I was peeking around a corner, spying on my son. Ian and his classmates were seated at tables, each child with a napkin, cup, and two vanilla wafers. Ian had only his napkin and a smile; he’s on the Orek Diet: inhale everything until you can no longer breathe.

After playing with this napkin for a few seconds, Ian stood and swaggered to the opposite side of the table. There was an empty chair next to Anna, who, being enthralled with her cup, had failed to notice the two uneaten cookies in front of her. Ian is an observant child, and so he sat in the empty chair.

And took one of Anna’s cookies.

He leaned forward, stretched his arm, and took a cookie right from under Anna’s oblivious nose. In my mind, I was watching World’s Dumbest Videos on Fox, which featured grainy security footage of a towheaded cashier wearing Thomas the Tank-Engine sneakers, grabbing a handful of Root Beer Barrels from the Brach’s Pick-A-Mix display, and innocently smiling and waving a the camera.

Ian slowly brought the cookie toward his open mouth…and stopped. He closed his mouth, and replaced the cookie on Anna’s napkin. And took the cookie again. And put it back. If Woody Allen were to rob a bank, I imagine it would look like this. Ian grabbed the cookie a final time, asked the teacher if he could have it, and, since the teacher hadn’t even been looking at Ian and therefore didn’t respond, he put the cookie back.

Shocked, I walked back to the choir room and told Kelly what had happened. She asked me if we should talk with the teacher. ‘Nah,’ I said. We can’t always be there, and he didn’t, after all, eat the cookie. We made our way to the choir room window, which happens to look into Ian’s classroom. The class was now coloring, and there was our son, coloring…and pushing his table’s crayons, one by one, onto the floor.

All of this – and his recent sharing tiffs with other kids – was spinning through my head as Ian’s teacher stood there, telling us that we needed to ‘have a talk’ about Ian.

I know Ian isn’t perfect. I mean, look at the title of this site! I know he misbehaves, and it’s often on my watch. But this was a third-party, an independent source – someone else telling me that my son had been bad, to the point where the teacher felt it necessary to ‘have a talk’ about the problem.

I didn’t care what anyone thought of Ian, and I wasn’t worried about how his behavior reflects upon me as a father. I just want my son always to be be the sweet, considerate, caring boy I know he usually often can be is. The boy whose face crumples when he knows he’s disappointed someone, or who will pat your shoulder as he asks concernedly, ‘Okay?’, or who greets me with ‘Hi!’ every morning – this boy cannot be the Cookie Crisp bandit.

Shoulders drooping, I resigned myself to ‘the talk’ and we asked what Ian had done. ‘Oh, nothing!’ said Ian’s teacher. ‘He’s certainly a little performer! He stood up and led every song, and danced and clapped next to the CD player. He was wonderful.’

The relief and pride I felt in my son was surpassed only by my surety that there are better ways for a teacher to deliver good news.

(Oh, and hon? Remind me to talk with Ian about the cookies. Because he really shouldn’t do that.)