The other day, I had the neighbor kids over for a playdate. There are actually 4 kids belonging to this particular neighbor, but on this day, I just had 2 of them in the playroom; 3-year-old Lily and 6-year-old Jake.
As is typical, an argument erupted within minutes of their arrival. Jake, in his carelessness, had somehow bumped Lily. She was incredibly pissed about it and was headed back home so she could report the offense to their mom who was folding laundry one house over.
In response, Jake initiated threat level orange apology tactics. When he realized he just didn’t have the apology that was going to come between Lily and tattling to their Mom, he went all in.
Fortunately, or not so fortunately for Jake, Lily was in the mood to negotiate and it went like this:
“Lily, I will let you kick me in the dick if you don’t tell Mom.”
“I want to kick you in the dick two times,” Lily countered.
“No, Lily, please, one time, and you have to promise you won’t tell Mom anyway.”
“How hard do I get to kick you in the dick?”
“As hard a you want, but you can only kick my dick one time and you can’t tell mom what happened.”
“I’m going to kick you in the dick two times and I won’t tell Mom.”
“Okay, that’s fine, hurry up.”
So I realize that I could make this story be about a few different things:
It did not escape my notice that Lily is one hell of a negotiator. I could turn this into a whole big thing about women and just when and how it is that we lose the ability to advocate for ourselves with conviction. But I won’t; that’s not my bag of dicks and there are a lot of amazing women marching around in pussy hats making that point much better than I ever could.
I could also make this a story about family values and opine on how exactly dick kicking becomes a viable form of currency in a household. I could post my judgement to the Internet and proclaim that under no circumstances will there be dicks kicked on my watch because I’m obviously a better parent than one that allows dick kicking.
But I won’t and you have yoga to thank for that.
Yoga teaches observation without judgement; to experience something without applying your own personal filters to it. To let a thing be what it is instead of what you make it (yoga nerds, that’s Satya I’m talking about).
So this is just going to be one of those “kids say the darndest things” stories. I’m going to laugh as a write it.
And that is better than a kick in the dick.
The names in the story have be changed to protect the innocent.
This story originally published on www.groundingup.com