Prompt: Send me "Milestones" and I'll write a drabble about my muse's first…
Another pre-canon installment. Shelly is three, almost four.
Chaos reigned inside of Ms. Claridge's preschool classroom. Three-year-olds (and a few of their parents) wept as if they were going off to war. Stuart McCormick struggled valiantly to shake his wailing son off of his leg.
"I know that you're going to be a big girl today, Shelly," Sharon bent down to her daughter's level as far as her nearly eight month pregnant belly would allow. "But Mommy is just a few minutes away if you need her."
'"Kay," a dry-eyed Shelly answered. Her eyes lit up as she caught sight of a table loaded with art supplies. "Finger paints!" she squealed, letting go of her mother's hand and bolting away.
"Your daughter is quite something," Sharon turned to see Ms. Claridge approaching. "You usually don't see too many dry eyes among the three-year-old group on the first day."
Sharon had to blink back a few tears of her own. Was her little girl already breaking away from her?
"Bye, Shelly!" Sharon called out.
Her daughter didn't appear to notice her.
Sharon felt a tear drip down her cheek. It's just the pregnancy hormones, she thought to herself. She dabbed at her eyes and headed out.
Both Sharon and Randy returned to South Park Elementary a few hours later to pick their daughter up. Ms. Claridge met them at the classroom door, her normally cheerful expression replaced by a grim one. Shelly stood next to her teacher, a sulky expression on her face.
"I'm afraid that I had to put your daughter in timeout for striking another student."
"What?!" Sharon gasped. "Shelly! We don't hit other people! What were you thinking?"
"Tommy took my cookie," the little girl grumbled.
"Oh, he did, did he?" Randy chimed in. "Then the little asshole deserved it. Shelly was just standing up for herself!"
"RANDY!" Sharon screeched. "I'm so sorry, Ms. Claridge. You can be assured that my husband and I will have a long talk with Shelly about this. It will never happen again."
"I can't believe that you said that!" Sharon groused at her husband on the drive home. "You're teaching our daughter bad habits! That it's okay to solve problems with violence!"
"It's important for kids to learn how to stand up for themselves, Sharon! You don't want her to turn into a doormat, do you?"
"We need to teach Shelly to use her words instead of her fists, Randy!"
"Using words is for pussies!" Randy scoffed.
"RANDY! LANGUAGE!" At that, the couple fell silent.
After a few minutes, Sharon spoke again. "You don't think that she's going to hit the new baby, do you?"
Randy glanced at his daughter through the rear view mirror.
"Of course not," he reassured his fretful wife.