The One With the 5-Year-Old's Question

Working in a library, I come into contact with a lot of kids. Quiet kids, loud kids, sweet kids, obnoxious kids. . .they're everywhere, these kids. My least favorite are the ones who scream and scream and scream when their parents have repeatedly told them to STFU. (These kids differ from the ones whose parents just let them run wild and ignore them. When this is the case, it's 25% disdain for the kid and 75% for the parent. But if they're ignoring their instructions? I can't stand those kids.)

Then there are kids like the 6- or 7-year-old boy who brought his own library card (signed in his own handwriting) and his books to the front desk all by himself to check out his books. I love kids like that, because they're so excited, and so polite, and very nice.

Today, though, I came across a kid who turned out to be perfectly fine (his brother, on the other hand, I wanted to slap, as he was screaming and crying and trying to twist out of his mother's grasp while yelling, "I'M NOT MISBEHAVING! I AM BEHAVING! I AM NOT MISBEHAVING!!!." Um, yes you are.) but who I swear took 10 years off my life.

Anyway, this kid is quietly standing beside his mother and horrible brother, just hanging out. He was about 5. I finish checking his mother's books out, and she turns with her younger, horrible Hell Beast to leave. The kid walks up to the counter (which, by him standing on his toes and stretching his neck out, he was just barely able to see over) and says to me, "Can I tell you something?"

My stomach Hit. The. Floor. There was no real reason for it, but I imagined it ending horribly. I expected him to say something like:

A) "Daddy says that Barack Obama is a Goddamn Communist Prick who is driving the economy into the ground. What does 'economy' mean?"

B) "Mommy drinks out of a big bottle every night until she falls asleep on the floor. When she falls asleep, me and my brother eat pie filling with a spork. Also, I like to play with matches. They're pretty."

C) "Mommy and Daddy yell at each other a lot."

D) "You've got a big black thing stuck in your teeth. What's that?"

or

E) "I just found out where babies come from! Wanna hear? Mommy says every lady has a vagina. Do YOU have a vagina?"

I panicked briefly, but said, "Sure. What do you want to tell me?"

He blinked his big, blue eyes at me, thought for a second, and said:

"What's that box of rubber bands for?"

I hope I didn't audibly breathe a sigh of relief, because I felt like I let out a giant breath I'd been holding. I wasn't going to have to hear something horrible, or get social services involved, or anything like that. I DID want to slap his mother and say, "You need to teach your kid that 'telling someone something' and 'asking someone a question' are NOT THE SAME THING, and you just FREAKED ME OUT."

But it was just an innocuous question that I knew exactly how to respond to.

(If you're wondering, when you have a book on hold, we put a piece of paper with your name on it on the side and rubber band it to the book. Once the person picks up their book, there's a container for them to drop the rubber bands in so we can reuse them.)

I'm just damn grateful that I didn't have to hear about his mother's vagina.

The One Where I Hate Twilight

I'm not failing today! It's raining outside, D and I are at the library, and I'm going to blog post before I forget.

Today was kind of a "don't do a whole heck of a lot that's necessary in life" day. I went back to my room at my father's house and picked it up a little bit (it was looking more junky than usual), put away laundry, and packed up some clothes to take with me to my home away from home for the week. D and I went to Dollar General and picked up some kitchen necessities (i.e. Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs. Yum.) and now we're here, siphoning the free WiFi. There's WiFi where we're staying, but when you have three floors of people all using it at the same time, it can get a little slow and tedious.

A sent a text to me the other day, asking if I was planning on going to the Thursday night showing of New Moon. My response to her was, "No. Robert Pattinson makes me want to kill."

This is true. I don't understand the RP love, and I feel like everyone who finds him, "OMGSOHOT!" needs to be introduced to someone who has good hygeine and who washes their hair regularly. The "Twilight" series, while an interesting enough story, really irritates me in general. They are some of the worst-written books in the history of people who made a gabillion dollars writing books, and the relationship between Edward and Bella is so incredibly unhealthy, it makes me wonder why all these teenaged (and some times older-aged) girls (and women) and like, "OMG! Love story for the ages! Bella 'N' Edward 4 EVA!"

So the point is, actually, no, I wasn't planning on going to see it. Truth be told, I haven't even seen the first one. D saw it and (inexplicably) really liked it. He hasn't read the books, though, so I don't think he quite understands my hatred and malice for the entire franchise. I have read 3 out of the 4 books. . .the first one, I tore through in a couple days. The second one, it took me a couple of weeks. The third one? A month and a half. It was sooooo sloooooow. I almost didn't finish it, because it was really boring to me. When the fourth one came out, I didn't even bother. I went to Wal-Mart the day it came out, flipped through it, and read the last half of the last chapter, just so I'd have some kind of conclusion to all the effort I'd put into it so far. I feel, just from what I read, that I was entirely justified in doing this. It seemed like. . .tripe.

Now, I'm not saying everything I read it great literature. But people say these are awesome AWESOME!! books, and. . .they are not.

Side note: I judge you if you have screaming children in the library. If you have screaming children in the library, you need to be slapped, then kicked in the face, then slapped again. I miss the days of quiet libraries.

The One With the Obnoxious Kid at Panera

What, praytell, has happened to common courtesy and raising your children properly?

I'm sitting here in a Panera Bread (had a You Pick Two with broccoli cheddar soup and half an Asiago Roast Beef sandwich, hold the onions, if you're wondering) and this kid walks up to my table. He was probably 6 or so. He stares at me for a minute until I look up at him, and when I do, he says, "Move. I want to sit there."

. . . . . . . .

Seriously.

I say, "No. I'm sitting here right now."

He goes and tells his mother on me. I don't know what he said, but I'm sure it went something along the lines of, "Mommy, I'm a giant brat and you are doing a sucky job raising me. The woman over there realizes this, and won't move from the table she's been sitting at for the better part of an hour to kowtow to my bratty ways."

Mother comes over to my table, brat child in tow, and says, "Hi. I'm sorry, but would you mind? My son really wants to sit at this table."

. . . . . . . . .

Seriously.

I said, "Well, no. I've been sitting here for a while, and I'm not going to leave for a while." She says there are several tables, and her son really wants to sit at this table. I say, I'm sorry, no.

This kid starts SCREAMING. Like, kicking and screaming, "IWANNASITATTHATTABLE!" kind of temper tantrum.

(Also, FYI, the person over the loudspeaker just called for Tinkerbell, because her order is ready. I love places where you can give your name for your order.)

Now, if you know me, you know I do not respond well to screaming children. Screaming at me, whether you're 6 or 60, is not the way to get me to do. . .anything, really. So I, of course, turn back to what I'm doing, as in, the discussion is closed. I see the woman go over to talk to a Paneras employee (a manager? I don't know.) and have a conversation, completely with wildly waving hands. The employee, bless them, shakes his head, says something, and the kid screeches.

Victory.

They sat down at a booth directly across the room from me, where both of them have been shooting daggers at me for the last 20 minutes or so. And you know what? I am going to sit here until they leave. I am going to sit in this exact spot until they're gone. So there. I could have given up my table. But why should I aid in this brat thinking he can do whatever he wants, and people are just going to hand it to him? His mother might do that, but I certainly am not.

Other than that, uneventful day. Dentist appointment, endocrinologist appointment. . .a whole lot of not a lot. Tomorrow's Wednesday. Thursday, I was going to head West, but it sounds like D is going to be here selling on Thursday, and it would be kind of dumb for me to go there while he's here. We'll see. We're still going to do the pictures this weekend.

I feel like I need to find a list of writing prompts somewhere. I don't know that I'm going to be able to keep this up for 100 days in a row if I'm just talking about my life because, you know. . .not that interesting.

Maybe I could just put up excerpts from my novel I'm not writing. (I should get on that.)