How SUUSI ended.
Jul. 24th, 2010 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaSUUSI actually got better for a while in the middle, after I wrote my last post. But you're not going to hear about that, because what happened at the end overshadowed everything for our family.
After dinner on Thursday evening, Michael,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bosssio, and I hung out in the SUUSI quad watching our older kids play while Colin slept on my lap. The quad was peaceful and uncrowded, so we could see everything that went on without getting out of our lawn chairs.
One little girl about Alex's age was playing with a wooden yo-yo by holding the end of the string and whirling the yo-yo around her in a big circle. She wandered aimlessly around the quad while she did this, and several times the yo-yo smacked into someone. She hit Alex twice. She hit Sio's son Ant three different times. She came very close to hitting a passing baby stroller. This went on for at least 10-20 minutes, increasingly catching our attention.
bosssio walked over to her, knelt down, and explained that she shouldn't play with the yo-yo that way because it was hitting people. As soon as she sat back down, the little girl continued swinging the yo-yo. She hit an adult walking by.
"Michael," I said, because Colin was sleeping on my lap. "Go ask that little girl where her parents are."
So he did. She told him she didn't know. So he took hold of the yo-yo string and told her firmly to give it to him and to "tell your parents to come get this from me."
She burst into tears and ran for her mother, who was sitting in a lawn chair about twenty feet away from where Michael had talked to her. The mother jumped up, stalked over to Michael, and yelled at him: how dare he tell her daughter what to do? Michael tried to explain what her daughter had been doing; she dismissed him because she hadn't seen anything. She and Michael went back to their respective lawn chairs.
Thenbosssio went over to explain what she had seen. The woman interrupted her, shouting that she didn't want to hear it. She collected her daughter and went inside the dorm across the quad from ours. We shrugged it off.
...Until she came back out and accused Michael of threatening physical harm to her daughter. Michael, obviously, denied doing any such thing. She said he must have, because why would her daughter lie?! Because she's five years old and doesn't want to get in trouble, Michael suggested. The woman insisted that her daughter didn't even know those words, and could not possibly be making them up. She said she was going to call the police. Michael told her to be his guest.
And then, holy shit, she did. She called the police on Michael.
We took the kids up to our room and called a friend of ours who is on the SUUSI Board. A lot of things happened at once. We figured out who she was by asking Alex who the little girl with the yo-yo was and then doing a reverse look-up in the SUUSI participant directory, which has an index by first names. And holy shit again: she's a minister. An ordained UU minister. An ordained UU minister who called the cops because someone took a toy that her child was using to hurt people.
By the time the police showed up about fifteen minutes after she called them, we had involved the SUUSI Director, three Board members, and the Minister of the Day. The officer politely took Michael's statement. He explained that if she chose to make a push for charges to be filed, the issue would go before a magistrate who would decide whether to issue an arrest warrant. The Minister of the Day and some of the other SUUSI folks went over to talk to her, and by the end of the evening she had backed away somewhat from her hysterical accusations. The police report and the potential charges, of course, still existed.
SUUSI is supposed to be an "intentional community," and the Minister of the Day asked Michael if he would be willing to "work towards reconciliation" with her. They set up a meeting for Friday evening - which she cancelled Friday at dinnertime, claiming to be too tired and fragile for that kind of conversation. She admitted to the Minister of the Day that she had overreacted (with, as far as I can tell, overtones of "...but only in defense of my child, so it was totally noble") but it appears that she has no intention of ever saying so to Michael. Let alone apologizing to him. It appears that she'll be able to just waltz away with no repercussions except, possibly, some damage to her reputation with people who have heard the story.
The thing that chills me is how close this came to being something that would follow Michael for the rest of his life. He could have been arrested, and that would have been a disaster for us. (Try explaining to your boss that you haven't come back from your vacation because you were arrested for threatening a young child.) And if he had been charged with a crime... even if it were found to be unsubstantiated, that would follow him.
In the adrenalin rush of Thursday evening the story seemed funny in an "OMG I can't fucking believe this craziness!" sort of way, and all our friends were joking about it. It's gotten a lot less funny over time. Michael is feeling increasingly bitter and depressed; he isn't sure that he wants to go back to SUUSI next year. I'm feeling down about it too. This is definitely the most un-SUUSI-like thing I've ever heard of, and it makes me feel shaky in my trust for this institution we love.
After dinner on Thursday evening, Michael,
bosssio, and I hung out in the SUUSI quad watching our older kids play while Colin slept on my lap. The quad was peaceful and uncrowded, so we could see everything that went on without getting out of our lawn chairs.One little girl about Alex's age was playing with a wooden yo-yo by holding the end of the string and whirling the yo-yo around her in a big circle. She wandered aimlessly around the quad while she did this, and several times the yo-yo smacked into someone. She hit Alex twice. She hit Sio's son Ant three different times. She came very close to hitting a passing baby stroller. This went on for at least 10-20 minutes, increasingly catching our attention.
bosssio walked over to her, knelt down, and explained that she shouldn't play with the yo-yo that way because it was hitting people. As soon as she sat back down, the little girl continued swinging the yo-yo. She hit an adult walking by."Michael," I said, because Colin was sleeping on my lap. "Go ask that little girl where her parents are."
So he did. She told him she didn't know. So he took hold of the yo-yo string and told her firmly to give it to him and to "tell your parents to come get this from me."
She burst into tears and ran for her mother, who was sitting in a lawn chair about twenty feet away from where Michael had talked to her. The mother jumped up, stalked over to Michael, and yelled at him: how dare he tell her daughter what to do? Michael tried to explain what her daughter had been doing; she dismissed him because she hadn't seen anything. She and Michael went back to their respective lawn chairs.
Then
bosssio went over to explain what she had seen. The woman interrupted her, shouting that she didn't want to hear it. She collected her daughter and went inside the dorm across the quad from ours. We shrugged it off....Until she came back out and accused Michael of threatening physical harm to her daughter. Michael, obviously, denied doing any such thing. She said he must have, because why would her daughter lie?! Because she's five years old and doesn't want to get in trouble, Michael suggested. The woman insisted that her daughter didn't even know those words, and could not possibly be making them up. She said she was going to call the police. Michael told her to be his guest.
And then, holy shit, she did. She called the police on Michael.
We took the kids up to our room and called a friend of ours who is on the SUUSI Board. A lot of things happened at once. We figured out who she was by asking Alex who the little girl with the yo-yo was and then doing a reverse look-up in the SUUSI participant directory, which has an index by first names. And holy shit again: she's a minister. An ordained UU minister. An ordained UU minister who called the cops because someone took a toy that her child was using to hurt people.
By the time the police showed up about fifteen minutes after she called them, we had involved the SUUSI Director, three Board members, and the Minister of the Day. The officer politely took Michael's statement. He explained that if she chose to make a push for charges to be filed, the issue would go before a magistrate who would decide whether to issue an arrest warrant. The Minister of the Day and some of the other SUUSI folks went over to talk to her, and by the end of the evening she had backed away somewhat from her hysterical accusations. The police report and the potential charges, of course, still existed.
SUUSI is supposed to be an "intentional community," and the Minister of the Day asked Michael if he would be willing to "work towards reconciliation" with her. They set up a meeting for Friday evening - which she cancelled Friday at dinnertime, claiming to be too tired and fragile for that kind of conversation. She admitted to the Minister of the Day that she had overreacted (with, as far as I can tell, overtones of "...but only in defense of my child, so it was totally noble") but it appears that she has no intention of ever saying so to Michael. Let alone apologizing to him. It appears that she'll be able to just waltz away with no repercussions except, possibly, some damage to her reputation with people who have heard the story.
The thing that chills me is how close this came to being something that would follow Michael for the rest of his life. He could have been arrested, and that would have been a disaster for us. (Try explaining to your boss that you haven't come back from your vacation because you were arrested for threatening a young child.) And if he had been charged with a crime... even if it were found to be unsubstantiated, that would follow him.
In the adrenalin rush of Thursday evening the story seemed funny in an "OMG I can't fucking believe this craziness!" sort of way, and all our friends were joking about it. It's gotten a lot less funny over time. Michael is feeling increasingly bitter and depressed; he isn't sure that he wants to go back to SUUSI next year. I'm feeling down about it too. This is definitely the most un-SUUSI-like thing I've ever heard of, and it makes me feel shaky in my trust for this institution we love.
