Monday, September 12, 2011

He Little Knew the Vengeance That Awaited Him

     Kids are awesome. They are way smarter than most of us give them credit for. Everything they do is either hilarious or interesting. I was at the playground with the two children I babysit the other day, and this was brought home to me again when I witnessed this little drama unfolding before my eyes.

     The boy was about ten years old, and he was a little different from the other children. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but something about him was just not the same. He was a little slow, and his face bore traces of the lonely and resentful expression of a child that is never quite understood. He liked to shout at the others, and the small ones were afraid of him (with the exception of the two-year-old girl I babysit, who treated him with queenly indifference). I had to tell him off, myself, for yelling at and frightening my small charges. He acted rashly, however, when he scared a little four-year-old girl. She ran off, crying, to seek solace from her older sister and her three friends.

      Well, I could have told him he’d made a mistake.