Earlier the husband and I were forging ahead with the yard work, while the little man played nearby. Before long he was joined by one of the neighbor boys, who, at one point turned to me with a shit-eating grin on his face, and matter-of-factly said “so, I heard he (gesturing towards the little man) rides the short bus”. What’s proper etiquette here? It seemed like he was trying to get a rise out of me and he nearly did. I felt like uninviting him to the upcoming birthday party. Instead I calmly replied “yes, sometimes he rides the little bus to school…other times he takes a regular-sized bus” which is true. But before I could elaborate, and make some point about tolerance and not singling people out for their differences, the kid had scampered off.