Seduced and abandoned

Something really odd happened tonight. I was at my friend's house, the one with the video game addicted seven (actually, now eight) year old. With of course the baby.

This little boy is one of the most sullen little kids I've ever known. I don't know if this is a phase all kids (especially boys) go through and I'm just ignorant, or if he's just shy and it comes across as sullen. But he always speaks to his mother with this "tone" like she's a pain in the ass (something I would never tolerate, not ever), and she told me again how he's find of saying "I hate you" when he doesn't get his way and calling her a "mean mommy". Again maybe all kids are like this and I'm just a Pollyanna...but Jesus Christ.

So anyway out of nowhere this kid asks his mother, "who is Robert's father?" Before I can step in, she says that we don't know him. Then he says, "yeah, but where is he?" Then she says, "He left. He was a bad guy. Very irresponsible." And just like that, I was seduced and abandoned. No longer am I the awesome independent single chick who never compromised and instead did this incredibly ballsy thing and had my own baby - now I'm the idiot who had unprotected sex with some lowlife, and my beautiful, wanted and planned son is some mistake that was left behind.

I was pretty horrified, but there was no fixing it - I couldn't contradict her and say how a doctor helped me make a baby; I don't even know if this kid knows the birds and the bees yet. Later after he went to bed she brought it up again and said "kids pick up on things" and I said I wish he didn't now think I was some loser that some guy left in the lurch. But now that I think about it, I think he must have heard the parents talking about it or something - I mean, why would this kid out of nowhere ask something like that, and keep pushing it?

In the end do I care what a sullen eight-year-old thinks of me? No. But something about the very idea of it - looking at sweet, innocent little Bumpus, and the idea of someone not wanting him, or someone, anyone, even thinking someone didn't want him, hurts me so deeply that I find myself very disturbed as I write this. It feels like a knife in my gut.

It probably doesn't help that just last night I watched a Downton Abbey episode in which this very scenario occurs and the woman and her adorable baby are treated like pariahs, and it hurt my feelings just watching that.

I know my friend meant no harm and was just flustered and tried to make it a "teachable moment" for her son, so I don't really hold it against her...but I think this is going to be my last visit over there for a while.