I saw this one coming

It's Friday, so it's time for a smile. This is part of a series in which Calvin invents a transmogrifier (which looks remarkably like a water pistol). I have enjoyed the series hugely, partly because I hadn't seen it before, which, when it comes to Calvin and Hobbes is rare for me!

He and Hobbes use the gun on each other several times as a result of an argument. They finally agree to turn each other back, being unsure which of them is which any more. Sadly, it runs out of zap or juice or power or whatever it runs on before Calvin has been tramsogrified back from an owl into a six year old boy.

He has been miserable about it for a few strips now, largely because he doesn't want to eat mice. I have been waiting for one of them to realise this:

Today was the first day of the Easter break for my sons, so it was rather appropriate timing.

After yesterday morning's collapse, I had been looking forward to a lie-in today, but demonstrating how fickle kids can be, my younger son shook me out of bed because he needed to get to the station to take his girlfriend to the movies, and he was running late. Considering that just 24 hours previously, he had been fearing that I was about to drop dead before his very eyes (heck, we all were!), this shows quite a turnaround!

I blogged several times about our misery while he was being bullied at their last school. He has blossomed and found his niche so completely at the new school, that he arranged a lift for himself to go to school yesterday once he was sure that I was being taken care of.

My older son, on the other hand, has been Mr Popular for years. He has been the boy the girls drool over. The one all the boys want to know.

Until now.

At the new school, he is ostracised and victimised. Some of the behaviour to which he has been subjected has been of a sort that I won't even put in writing in such a public space as this. Suffice to say that it has been designed to emasculate and humiliate him.

His test results are in freefall. He will be lucky even to be permitted to re-enroll next year at this rate.

It has reached such a low point, that we are now looking into other schools. Our solitary attempt to obtain staff support served only to make matters far worse, and he has asked both us and the staff to butt out. I am inclined to go into the school swinging a figurative baseball bat. Heck, if I am to be completely honest, I am inclined towards a real bat. My rational side has urged caution. After all, the lad is very nearly 18. He is almost an adult. Although, strictly, speaking, until the day before his 18th birthday, he is still a minor, we have gradually been empowering him in preparation for that shift. It would be somewhat hypocritical if I rode roughshod over his wishes and started cracking heads together.

So, yesterday, when I was flopping all over the place like a landed fish, it was with ill-disguised relief that my elder son appointed himself my carer-in-chief and refused to leave my side, even though he knew other, more capable help was at hand.

Many years ago, when my elder son was a frighteningly articulate 3 year old, a friend joked that I enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes so much because I related so well to Calvin's mother. How I wish those words had not come back to haunt me!