Dress Code Fallout

I believe I mentioned that the other day, Smaller Son went to school with a decidedly non-standard outfit on. His school shirt was inside out. His socks were wildly mismatched, and he wore blue gumboots. I mentioned the shirt to him, and he just shrugged, and said, "I know." I didn't bother mentioning the socks or the boots. They're pretty much standard for him.

However, on that particular day he also wore a folded newspaper hat, after the fashion of Calvin & Hobbes. The boys have been reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes ever since we bought the hardbound complete editions. (I regret to say that while I think it's a marvellous comic, it's a bloody awful role model for growing boys.)

Anyway: Smaller Son had a newspaper hat on his head just to top off the ensemble, and he was blithely off to school. I admit it: I had visions of a school full of Nelson Muntz lookalikes pointing at Smaller Son, and saying, "Ha, ha!" But I figured, you know... he has to learn someday, right?

Of course, by that afternoon I'd forgotten all about it. I didn't think to ask him anything until yesterday evening, when he folded himself a new paper hat. "What happened to the old one?" I said. "What did they think about it at school?"

"Well, a couple of kids laughed," he said, very calmly. "At first. But then our whole class made paper hats and decorated them, and we wore them for the rest of the day. Everybody really liked them."

"Yeah," his brother chimed in. "They were all wearing them in the playground. I had to show some of my class how to make them too."

Okay, fine. I know when I'm beaten!