Chapter 14 — Wanda and the Deflection-Move

Wanda is a small weasel. She has warm brown fur and creamy white patches. Her nose is always twitching. It’s like she’s sniffing out trouble. Or maybe a way out of it. Her eyes are quick. They dart around, never quite settling. She always seems to be looking for something. Or for someone else to blame.

Wanda has a special way of doing things. When someone says she did something wrong, Wanda’s ears might flatten just a little. Her tail might give a tiny flick. Then she points at someone else. “But what about them?” she’ll say. She is not a bad guy. She just shows us a trick people use. This trick is called the Deflection-Move.

This is her special move. Someone might say, “Wanda, you left your socks on the kitchen table again!” Wanda will twitch her nose. She’ll say, “WHAT ABOUT Jimmy? He left his muddy boots by the door!” She moves the problem away from herself. She never talks about her own socks. She just points at Jimmy’s boots. It feels good for Wanda when she does this. A little puff of relief. The problem isn’t hers anymore. It’s someone else’s. For a moment, she feels clever. She got away with it.

It doesn’t matter if Jimmy left his boots. That doesn’t make Wanda’s socks okay. Her move is a deflection. She pushes the blame somewhere else.

This is a big deal. Wanda shows us a trick called whataboutism. It’s a way of talking. Tessa will teach us about a similar trick later. Someone tells you what you did wrong. You don’t want to talk about it. So you say, “But what about them?” Or you say, “You do it too!” This is a trick. It makes the first problem disappear. The real problem never gets fixed.

“Wanda, your room is a disaster!” said Pip, her friend, one sunny afternoon. Pip stood at the doorway, holding her nose. A pile of socks sat next to a half-eaten sandwich. A forgotten science project glittered under a bedsheet.

Wanda looked up from her comic book. Her quick eyes darted to Pip. Then they darted to the messy room. She twitched her nose. “Oh, my room?” she asked. She sounded surprised. “What about your room, Pip? I saw a whole tower of books in your corner yesterday!”

Pip blinked. “My books are neat! And they’re not moldy sandwiches!”

Wanda shrugged. “Still messy, though. Books everywhere.” She went back to her comic.

The problem was Wanda’s room. But Wanda had changed the subject. She had pointed at Pip’s books. This was her Deflection-Move. She didn’t want to clean her room. So she made Pip’s room the problem instead.

It didn’t matter if Pip’s room had books. Pip’s books didn’t make Wanda’s sandwich disappear. They didn’t make her socks tidy. Wanda just used the trick. She pushed the blame away.

This is what whataboutism looks like. Someone points out your mess. You point out someone else’s mess. The first mess is still there. It just feels like it’s not your problem anymore.

Wanda knows this trick well. She uses it all the time. She’s not trying to be mean. She just doesn’t like being told what to do.

Wanda teaches us a lesson. She says, “I do this when I don’t want to talk about what I did wrong.” She shrugs her small shoulders. “We all do this sometimes,” she admits. “The trick is to spot it. Then you can go back to the first problem.” It’s like a game of catch. Someone throws you a ball. You throw it to someone else. But the first person still needs their ball back.

How to spot a Deflection-Move:

• Did the person talk about the first problem? Or did they just push it away?
• Is it even true that the other person did it? Sometimes it’s not!
• Even if the other person did it, does that make your problem okay? Usually, no.
• How to get back on track: Say, “Okay, but we were talking about this. What about this?”

Wanda makes it very clear. “I am here to show you something,” she says. “I’m not a bad guy.” She taps her paw on the table. “Pushing the blame away doesn’t fix anything.”

“It’s not hard to do,” she adds. “Just see the trick. Then go back to the first problem.”

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