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Little Joan Crawford
Occasionally I have these moments where my misanthropic side comes into rather unpleasant contact with my marshmallow underbelly. This happened in the playground.
Felix had been eyeing a scooter. He's seriously interested in wheels of all sorts (he sits and watches the superannuated skateboarders slowly practicing on local loading platforms promising everyone who passes that he will "do that someday") so I was hardly surprised. But since the scooter wasn't his, I redirected his energies to climbing.
Then Sebastian needed some attention (you see where this is going, don't you?) and a moment later, there was Felix on the previously abandoned scooter. With Felix was the scooter's owner, a devilish little girl in pink and her friend, an androgynous child (girlish haircut, boyish clothes, but those things don't mean anything- in my neighborhood people love to dress their children in ways that would keep you guessing if you cared). Little Pink was wielding a pair of blunt craft scissors while gripping Felix's hand. I didn't hear the beginning of her threat, but it ended with the words "because I'm bigger and stronger than you are and I always will be" before I interrupted by plucking my completely nonplussed kid away. (If I recall Mommie Dearest correctly, and I might not since it has been decades since I read it, this is something that Joan Crawford says to her daughter Christina when they have races in their Hollywood swimming pool.)
On the one hand, Little Pink and Gender Neutral were sort of fascinating for me. I've always been kind of intrigued by horrible children. I've never wanted to deal with them, mind you, but they're fascinating and I would love to harness some of that aggression and focus for my own non-nefarious ends.
But my marshmallow guts are stronger than my raised eyebrow. Felix might not have minded but I truly hated Little Pink. I'm used to playground power struggles but this one felt nastier. Perhaps it was the scissors; perhaps it was the attempt at psychological warfare.
This is, I'm guessing, going to be the way of it for a while. Felix is going to have nasty little social interactions that don't make him blink, but which will trigger a hideous mean streak in me.
No, no. I didn't say anything or do anything (though I was subsequently told I should have told her mother to take the scissors away from her, for her own safety if nothing else), but I would have loved to. So here's hoping I'll either come around and toughen up so that I can ignore little nasties as well as Felix does or that I'll develop a withering talent.
I'm actually sort of hoping for the latter.
posted by Elise at 7:51 PM
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