Last night, I wrote about my attempts to harden my five year old so he wouldn’t get his heart broken by a new neighbor, Dylan.

This morning as we walked to the bus, I whispered to Jonah, “Remember, sit next to Alec. He’s nice.” Jonah nodded, but right before he stepped onto the bus, he turned to me and said loudly, “I’m sitting next to Dylan.” Whatever.

My efforts to shelter my kid from rejection and pain were wasted. I could not dampen his five year old hope that the big boy with video games would open his arms to him and share the game controls. Thirty nine years of cynacism could not be injected into his pintsized frame.

It’s going to be so hard to watch my son, who wears his heart on his sleeve, fall down. And he’s going to fall down a lot in the future. Oh, how I dread the junior high school years. I can’t protect him from the sneers of girls in high school. Or the failure to make the football team. And those thin letters from colleges.

My boy and I are a pair of marshmellows. I thought I had developed a nice burnt crust to protect me, but I’m going to have make that crust more sturdy.