If Small Children Had Styrofoam Heads, I’d Probably Like More Small Children
Diary entry #1: 2021–11–06
I rerouted my walk today because as I rounded the corner and approached a park I enjoy visiting, there was a small gang of children loitering there.
Can it be called loitering when it’s children in a park? I don’t know. What I do know is that I felt threatened immediately upon seeing them — and intensely so.
I only got a glance, but my mental math was already on overdrive; there’s 7 of them, ranging from 8 to 12 years old. They seem rowdy and unlikely to be afraid of a 35-year-old woman wearing a grubby oversized parka with coffee stains all over the front.
I imagined the children rushing me — wanting to pet Lucy, asking questions and generally being annoying the way strange children often are to the adults who just happen to be in their general vicinity.
This is how it always is with me; I sort of forget that I don’t enjoy random children’s company until I’m faced with that fact head-on, nearly running into a band of them at the moment of attack.
I hesitate to write this because whenever I’ve mentioned that I’m not a “kid person” in the past, I’m faced with nothing but criticism and judgment.
People stare at me with those, what do you mean, eyes. They’ll say something like, “You’ve got children of your own, though!”
I’m a 35-year-old woman with a goddamn uterus, which translates to the fact that I’m supposed to love all children unconditionally.
My mom is the same way. She was never the mother who told my childhood friends to call her Mom. Even now, she can find endless things to marvel about when it comes to her grandchildren but put her in a room with a tiny infant or an uninteresting toddler that’s not related to her, and she wants nothing to do with it.
I don’t mind kids that aren’t mine if they’ve got some sort of a hook to reel me in. It seems nowadays so many small children are know-it-alls or just plain spoiled. They aren’t interesting because they’ve had their every desire handed to them on a silver platter.
This doesn’t explain my dislike for babies, but the thing about babies is they’re just plain dull. They don’t do anything! You can’t even play fetch with them.
Give me a kid to talk to with an actual hook for a hand, and now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s talk about that, kiddo! What kind of a home life would that child have had to endure to receive a hook hand rather than a prosthetic limb? Was he raised by pirates? Now that would be an exciting conversation.
There’s a lot of pressure to be the sort of woman who melts when seeing a newborn baby. Our insides are supposed to get all mushy and warm with baby fever. Seemingly it’s a right of passage if you’re a woman and in a room with a small infant, to hold your arms out and ask to cuddle the little puke machine.
It’s not like I hate small children and wish them harm or anything. I’d save a kid if I saw him struggling down a rapid river, of course. I’m not a fucking monster. It’s just in times of normalcy, I’m pretty much indifferent to the tiny humans who roam this world.
And yes, many children intimidate me. I just don’t know what to say around them. I’m always dropping f-bombs and asking them if they’ve filed their taxes yet this year.
I avoided the kids by making a sharp turn down a back alley, and then, right there before my eyes, was a head impaled on a fencepost.
It wasn’t a human head, but instead, a Styrofoam one that’s used for displaying wigs, or hats I suppose. Except there wasn’t a wig or a hat on this head. It had been decked out in sequins and bright synthetic feathers of all colours. The face was painted onto the thing and quite expertly I might add.
Is it weird that my first thought wasn’t — why? But instead, “Could I steal that right now without getting caught?”
Alas, I was too short to reach atop the fence post.
The head got me thinking about the kids again, and I realized that if any of those children had been wielding a Styrofoam head and, say, screaming some sort of battle cry upon the snow strewn grass of the park, I’d probably have gone over and talked to him without reservation.
So maybe it’s not that I dislike children, perhaps I’d just prefer to spend my time with the most interesting people possible.
What the hell is happening here? You ask. Check out the link below to my introduction of The Walking Diaries for more information!