This morning I went to drop Cooper off at his 2nd day of “Kindergarten Here I Come” summer camp.  I noticed yesterday that there were quite a few kids crying and clinging to their mommy’s legs, as my boy moved his way through the crowd, threw his bags in to the appropriate cubby, grabbed a name tag off of the stack perched on top of the cubby wall, slapped it on his chest and said “Nametags.  Cool…” and then headed straight for a table full of Legos.  “Bye Cooper” I called as Sophie and I headed for the door.   Yep.  Exactly as I expected.  Not even a nod in our direction.  He was already intent on building something, which he probably later declared was a police car.  So, this morning when we got there, I wasn’t surprised to see a little boy out on the sidewalk, holding tightly to his mom and crying that he didn’t even want to go in to the building, much less go to  camp.   Cooper’s teacher Miss Andrea was heading out to try to talk him in.  My dropoff, on the other hand, was much a repeat of yesterday’s morning, except this time Cooper only whipped his lunch bag and his backpack in the general direction of the cubbies because he saw some other boys playing cars and trucks and had to get in on the action.  As Soph and I again turned to leave, I saw Miss Andrea, the mom and the little boy, slowly making their way toward the classroom.  Miss Andrea was saying “Really, I know the perfect boy for you to hang out with.  He’s great at making friends and he’ll be happy to show you around.”  Pause.  Then “Cooper!  Will you come out here for a sec?”  Oh, my heart soared.  “That’s my boy” I thought.  Pride swelled as I grabbed my cell to call D.Jones to tell him the good news.  “Our boy is the chosen teacher’s helper and he’s not even in kindergarten yet” I excitedly declared to D.Jones.

Well, 1 p.m. rolled around and I headed back to pick up my social little man.  I met him at the park and quickly tried to ask him about his new little friend from the morning.  I couldn’t wait to hear about how Cooper surely showed him around the park building, quickly befriended him and made him at ease, and then probably even helped him build a cool Lego squad car, right?  Well, the conversation actually went like this:

Me:  Coops, did you make a new friend this morning?

Cooper:  Who is Cooper?  I’m an officer.  Please call me officer.

Me:  Okay, I’ll play along in a minute but first I want to ask Cooper something.  Coops, did you help out that little boy this morning that Andrea introduced you to?

Cooper:  I’m not Cooper.

Me:  C’mon Coops.  Did you?  I want to hear all about it.

Cooper:  What boy?

Me:  The one who was crying.  Did you make friends with him and help him out today?

Cooper:  Nah.  All he wanted to do was cry so I went to play.

I totally should know better than to make up my perfect little scenarios.  They never quite fit with the real story of my 5 year old buddy…but I’m still proud as heck.