I wonder which chromosome the gene for Jewish Guilt is on? I wonder what its inheritance pattern is? I'm pretty sure it's autosomal dominant...or at least it is in my family.

Last night, were were at our friends' house for dinner--there were three couples, six kids. Near the end of the evening, the three older kids, all of them six, went into the host-kid's bedroom to play. Some 'incident' occurred in which N was pretty much kicked out of the room and had the door shut in his face, leading to much 2.5-year-old indignation and angst. Baroy, who had seen the incident but not the perpetrator, just sort of let it go, and took N home (we'd come in separate cars at different times). I, however, just couldn't let it go. A little later, as I drove home with E, I asked her who had shut the door in N's face. She hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally I interrupted and said, "You know, it doesn't really matter. N is your brother, and you have to learn to stand up for him when your friends do something mean to him."

A moment of silence from the behind me. Then, "It was me, mommy. I was the one who shut the door on N. Daddy said it was time for him to go, and we wanted to play and..."

"Well, that's even worse then," I said. "You're the only one he has who he can count on to defend him when someone is hurting him, and if you're the one who's hurting him..."

I let it drop after that, and we were mostly silent the rest of the 5-minute drive home. As we pulled up to the driveway, E said, "Do you think N is still awake? I want to go and tell him I'm sorry."

Awwwww. And the fact that she still wanted to apologize, even after we found her much-labored-over art project--a poster for when she's star of the week at school--had been, um, 'enhanced' by her brother with a brown marker ("I look like I have a crazy moustache, Mom," she wailed correctly), well, that just says wonders about the power of guilt.