elizaskinner.net - the jambox

Or, “I am dead inside, and hate children.”

Gross.

I used to love kids. I prided myself on being the kind of babysitter that kids begged for – little boys had crushes on me, little girls wanted to be me. If you were between 0 and 7 years old, you were OBSESSED with me.

But now, it’s officially over.

Yesterday while I was doing laundry, a little boy threw a sock at me. He had been carrying the sock around for a few minutes, while his mother yelled “NO, Joshie, that’s a white! We never put that in with the colored clothes!” and “Joshie! Hands out of your pants!” and “Don’t rub the window. JOSHIE!!! DON’T rub the window!” I politely ignored them, knowing that families are all cesspools of insanity.

Then the kid comes up to me and tries to sneak the sock into my clean laundry. The horrible, diseased sock that he has dragged all over the filthy Laundromat – he tries to shove it and his sticky hand into my nice clean laundry. I look at him, and he looks at me, and then he throws the sock at my face. At this point I don’t think, “Aw, he’s flirting with me”. I think “Fuck you, you little asshole.” In fact, I think, “I’m sorry – is this Laundromat too BORING for you? Guess what, it’s boring for all of us. You think it’s cute to throw things at people? Good luck with that, Joshie – Good luck. And good luck finding someone to marry you with your mom telling you to keep you goddamn hands out of your pants all the time. That woman is a blueprint for every woman you’ll ever fuck, Joshie. Enjoy.”

Of course I don’t SAY that though.

Instead I looked up at his mom – like you’re supposed to. That look that says “Oh, hello – I thought you might want to notice what your child is doing.” She looks back at me and barks “You left it in the machine! It’s yours!” So apparently this lady wanted to teach her son a lesson about doing favors by having him drag around my sock until it was almost as dirty as his stained, filmy hands, and then throwing it at me. Thanks.
This is the latest example of my new view of children as living tumors. Being in New York for 7 years has begun to turn me into a caricature of a New Yorker – part of which is being completely devoid of any maternal instinct. Kids do not make my heart skip a beat, they make me want to keep my purse away from them so they don’t get jam and barrettes all over it. Babies look to me like horrible hairless dogs – and not an in exotic rare-breed sort of way. All the “adorable” stuff kids do just seems obnoxious to me – like when they wear tutus or learn random facts? It just seems like they’re trying too hard.

So that is the latest bit of damage this city has done – soon I suppose I’ll get a letter from the IRS demanding my uterus as part of some new city tax. Fine with me.

Glennis, my comedy yang, of course disagrees entirely.
Because she is “the nice one”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Most Popular Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.