Shaul, a gorgeous child of around four years old, was always impeccably dressed. He was tall and golden, with a warrior pose much like that of his namesake. It was his endless energy and creativity that inspired other children to follow him around. He was magnetic.

But the thing is, he sometimes acted in ways that were not so magnetic. “You wear diapers! You are a baby…!” I once heard him say derisively to my youngest child, a slight two-and-a-half-year old, with a very social personality. We were at a camp-related gathering, after hours, and my son was trying to run around with the bigger boys. Then, Shaul and a friend pulled down the waistbands of their shorts to demonstrate to my clueless child how macho they were because they had underwear. And yes, my son was in a diaper. The thing is, he was so very happy to be in diapers. We spent much of the summer reading “Once Upon a Potty” and talking about how Joshua, the book’s main character (if you have the male version) used a potty instead of a diaper, but to him, this was a fictional idea. Diapers were great, and potties were not, except if you were Joshua. The comments and the underwear-show left him unfazed, but it struck me as painful, that at such a young age, a kid could find a harmless (and normal) difference and turn it into something malicious.

Another day, we passed Shaul in the park, and he screamed out from the swings, “You go in a stroller!” His face, oscillating back and forth, was in harmony with his nagging tune. At that moment, my son was walking. In fact, he spent much of his summer lunging from his stroller, and following along at his own leisurely pace, keeping up with his older siblings. This teasing did not seem to bother him, either. But it hurt me. It was like Shaul was trying to show his supremacy, to belittle an innocent child who wanted to do nothing more than run around with him and his followers. But Shaul made it his business to outline the vast differences in their two-year age gap. Shaul was a big boy! Liad was not, and therefore, he didn’t belong.

But the worst comment came when we were sitting by the shallow end of the communal pool. I was alone with my son and my nephew, as several other kids clustered in the deeper pools. While the two boys were enjoying dipping into the chilly few inches of water, a face loomed behind the wire fence that surrounded our area, and pressed itself between the gaps in the links. “You’re in the baby pool!” we heard, in that taunting, whiney voice.

“You’re in the baby pool!” This time, louder. “Why are you in the baby pool?” My son and nephew turned and just stared, unable to answer, frozen in their moment of fun, and not really sure what to respond.

“Because they want to be here,” I tried. “Because it’s fun.” But this didn’t satisfy him. Really, there was no acceptable answer in his book. There wasn’t meant to be an answer.

“You’re in the baby pool…!” And then, all those years of my mother telling me that if someone hits you, you hit them back, settled on me like a storm cloud.

Shaul was wearing a hooded towel. It was designed to look like an animal, a dragon I think, with blue googly eyes on the crown, and sharp, fierce teeth trimming the edges of the hood, around his forehead. They hung like daggers between his eyes. One could argue that an adult would not wear such a towel. Probably neither would an older child, as it might be deemed “babyish,” and so I took whatever ammunition I could, and threw it back at him.

“You’re wearing a baby towel. Why are you wearing a baby towel?” I asked, matter-of-factly. It crept up on me. The words just burst from my throat. And then I paused and waited for an answer, and Shaul just blinked, finally silent, fresh out of his remarks. I was playing his game, and it surprised him. He stood there, staring at us through the fence, his hooded dragon slowly sagging over his face, obscuring his menacing eyes, and then he turned and walked away.

There are times when it is my own children who can be the pursuers; my toddler is quite adept at spontaneous hair-pulling and bathroom-related name calling, but sometimes all it takes is a little water to douse the flames of the fire-breathing dragon. The next time Shaul saw us, he didn’t make his usual beeline for my son, but instead, walked right past us. Two strangers, a dragon and a boy.

Sarah Abenaim is a freelance writer living in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected].

By Sarah Abenaim