One of my kids is getting pretty good on his skateboard. Here he is making his way to the neighbors’ house for a cookout last weekend. This video bit doesn’t really show off his mad skillz, but you can get a sense of his confidence. When we toured a bike path near Worcester the following day, he was daredevil enough to take some fairly long downhill slopes—and he has no helmet, knee pads or elbow pads at this point (our bad).

We hung out with the neighbors for a while during their annual cookout, a kind of official kick-off to the summer season. It was mostly an extended family affair, with few other neighbors invited, if any. Our kids have become good buddies with their kids, and it was also a birthday celebration, so not really like a block party.We didn’t really know anyone, and people were drinking a lot, cans of beer and soda as well as bottles of Hennessy. A hip-hop radio station blared out of the garage while one of the older sons grilled a bunch of meat—barbequed chicken, hot dogs, all-beef burgers. The fifth-grade daughter was really nice to me, asking me what I’d like to drink and offering me some food.

My highly-sensitive (HSP) son, who has recently declared himself to be a vegetarian, instantly eschewed the entire thing, after hearing some foul language and being treated like a nuisance by the 12-year-old boys present. The birthday boy himself had just turned 12, and ordinarily they get along fine, but with his friends there my kid just felt totally not part of the scene. He got back on his bike and steered his way home, and we only found out because our daughter came into the house, where we were socializing and watching a basketball game, and informed us that our kid had just taken off down the street.

He’s been super moody lately, which I find especially difficult because I’ve also been super moody lately.

He developed a problem with seams in his clothing and tags on his shirts some years ago, after being a very happy-go-lucky toddler who did not seem bothered by anything. Emotional sensitivity set in dramatically when he started preschool and the clothing sensitivity issues followed closely after that. Now he gets stuck on certain types of clothing, whether it’s texture or structural composition; he’s enormously particular. Over the winter he decided turtlenecks were the most comfortable shirt to wear and for a while there was only one pair of pants he would put on. I couldn’t find more turtlenecks to save my life, but we finally ordered more online, only to see the weather get much warmer. Now he won’t wear anything else.

The decision to become a vegetarian has also set him apart, and so at a very warm-day neighborly gathering where he felt out of place age-wise, insisted on wearing a turtleneck, apparently detested the foul language being used (it could have been “darn it” or “crap” for all I know), and would not eat any meat (which was being served up in large quantity), this was just a total disaster for him, and we parents are left trying to piece together the situation like Sherlock Holmes trying to understand what propelled him into this dark mood of grumpy behavior and how to get him out of it again.

Meanwhile I was suffering from allergies but didn’t realize it yet, so my head was all foggy and my brain was wrapped in gauze. I felt like I had a social disorder—I was terrible at meeting new people. I couldn’t make small talk. I felt a little like I was on something… I could just sit there, staring into space and I would be alright. Taking allergy medication only makes this more of my kind of reality. I just wanted to watch the little kids run in circles and get into power struggles over small toys—it was totally entertaining. This didn’t exactly make me feel good about my place at the cookout, however, so I started to feel paranoid that I was being anti-social. So I wanted to run away, too.

River took off to see to HSP Boy, who had gone home. They had a difficult discussion for a while and eventually returned, only to have HSP Boy turn around and go home again for some other sensitivity reason. This time, I followed him, and managed to persuade him to eat some leftovers. To my surprise he happily ate leftover moo shu vegetables from our Chinese dinner out the night before. This is mostly a dish of shredded cabbage and carrot. I added rice, which he enjoyed a lot. He is a funny child.

The Chinese dinner out was an effort to celebrate a few milestones in the family. I successfully submitted an application for grad school. River got a raise. Our daughter had performed that night at the end of a week-long children’s theater camp. She had a blast and managed to fake an English accent all week after meeting a fellow camper (a slightly older girl) who had changed her name and was also faking an accent. It was a really annoying week and all of us in the family were thoroughly sick of the fake accent by Friday. So maybe the dinner out was partly to celebrate the end of the camp and hopefully the end of the accent as well. We decided our daughter was definitely a drama queen in training, but we’ve known that since she was two.

The great thing is she is making friends, and the neighbors are an important part of that.

My son and I eventually made it back to the cookout (eating helped, another HSP thing), and the mood there had relaxed a whole lot since an hour or two earlier. People had eaten, and it was nearly time to bust out some birthday cake. The basketball game was almost done, which would release a fair number of men who had hunkered down at the television inside. Some more people who were not family had shown up, including the hostess’s lawyer boss and his wife and two kids. Everyone was kind of mixing it up a little more. Some of the kids started trying to play jump rope on the grass in the back yard, but they couldn’t synchronize the turning of the rope.

After birthday cake and ice cream, two nice ladies offered to turn the rope and quickly realized pavement was needed, so they brought the whole show out to the front sidewalk. This was a big hit and really helped bring the kids of different ages together. It was fun to watch some of the women enjoy watching and even trying out a little double dutch themselves. They began to get organized and let the kids try it out one at a time. Some of them were really good. For some this was a first double dutch experience. I like to think all the neighbors got a good show for a little while if they were peeking out their windows.

You can see my kid in the turtleneck at right. I don’t know when he is going to give this up. All weekend he was riding his bike around in the turtleneck and sweating a ton.

These neighbors were really nice to invite us over for their cookout and I hope we get to come again. Next time we won’t feel so awkward.

Posted by Heather B on 22 April 2008 at 11:23 am.