Kids and stuff

My cousin Rachel; appropriately, in the snow.



I find myself listening to children a lot. I’m not around them very often, but I have become captivated with their desire to show or tell me things whenever I see them. This morning, it was a little Hispanic boy who wanted me to see how his hands looked in his father’s gloves. Yesterday at work, it was a girl who wanted to explain to me how her snowman came to have the name “Frostibug” and how it was really quite natural that it should be so. I wonder if adults have the same desire to show and tell, and just don’t because they are way too refined to act that eager for everything. It implies that they need others, opinions outside their own to reinforce their worth.
The odd thing is, most adults don’t say, look at that pathetic and idiotic child. He actually is telling you about how he fell in the snow and that’s why he’s cold. As if you care. As if you should care. He should be more secure in himself, and not have the desire to share meaningless information all the time. But when you hear about a fall in the snow from a seven year old, you feel like you are falling in the snow. For the first time, you are slipping and falling in the cool wet and it is chilly and wonderful. And you don’t mind, because your father is taking you and your sisters out to get hot chocolate. And eight ounces is plenty, because you haven’t been trained to get the largest size possible at all times. Twenty ounces of anything is too much to drink in one sitting.
I stand at the café station with a damp, slightly tan rag in my hand, pausing from filling the Splenda to hear this extraordinary tale. It is extraordinary because it is so ordinary- this moment, this boy will not be here again, but there will be a thousand boys and a thousand moments yet to come. Perhaps it is because I probably won’t be here for these boys with their moments that I feel like this one is worth listening to. Perhaps it is because I just want a little rest, and to stand and listen to this boy is enough. I touch the top of his head a few minutes later, and he doesn’t even bat an eye- he has his hot chocolate, and he knows me now. Though names have never been mentioned, we know one another. We fell in the snow today.