I don't mind waiting in long lines, because it allows me to engage in one of my favorite hobbies. Eavesdropping isn't as simple as listening in to any nearby private conversation, any more than hunting is shooting whatever organism your gun is pointed at. Applying the skills of aural voyeurism to the average conversation is the equivalent of shooting a tree. A true sportsman is more discriminating than that, setting out with a particular type of prey in mind. For my part, the conversations I relish are between a young kid and an adult who is not his or her parent. I savor the lopsidedness in which such conversations are steeped: the more comfortable one party is (say, the overbearing, booming-voiced auntie using sentences far too complex for her 5-year old companion), the more uncomfortable the other one becomes (5-year-old watching the floor in case an escape hatch opens while executing subtle but complex slow-motion dance moves).
It takes close listening and sharp deductive reasoning skills to figure out when you have such a situation in the checkout line with you. The most common clues include a woman saying something to the child about "your mother." This alone isn't a dead giveaway, as plenty of children have two mommies, and even more have crazy mommies who speak of themselves in third person.
After just moments in line at the bookstore the other day, my skills were rewarded with conclusive evidence that the adult and child behind me were not related. It seemed that mom was somewhere else in the store (self-help? fantasy?); this lady must have, seeing a gleam in her friend's eye that signalled a desperate need to be alone for a few moments, volunteered to take the little girl to pay for her picture book. The kid was happily chattering; she was clearly the comfortable one in this situation. She pointed to the lady's bracelets and said, "pretty."
"Thank you! Can you count them?"
"One...two...three..." and so on, carefully and deliberately, but flawlessly, to nine.
"That's a lot of bracelets on my wrist, huh?"
The girl pointed to a display of drinking games near the checkout: Beer-opoly, etc.
"A game! Oooh. I want that game! Please? Please?"
I don't know if the rest of the line was listening as closely as I was, or if they were, whether they, too, smiled to think of the mother's mortification upon hearing her daughter beg this lady to buy her something, much less a drinking game.
"No, honey. That's a...an adult...well, that's a beer game."
The child was squirming, maybe even hopping a little bit. "But I like beer games! I love beer games! Please!"
It was pretty funny in the moment. It made me think of how irrational we humans get in the face of strong desire; how in a moment of want, nothing matters outside of the thing that you covet. Logic, truth, and dignity fade away. I wondered whether we outgrow that urge or just refine our methods, replacing hopping up and down with more artful strategems such as pick-up lines and blackmail.
Maybe the chance to return to that childhood impulse is part of the pleasure of Mardi Gras bead-whoring: that single-minded desire for beads that causes people to shed clothing for strangers. While I've never personally uncovered any important parts of my body, I have pleaded, kissed strangers, called people "gorgeous" who weren't, and I've certainly jumped up and down and screamed until the bead-thrower couldn't ignore me any more. It's fun for a couple of hours. Still, it must get exhausting for kids to spend years that way, constantly in the grips of such a powerfully desperate longing for every shiny object onto which their gaze happens to fall.
The lady had to stifle a laugh and then backtrack, re-explain. Still failing to change the kid's mind, I watched her think up and halfheartedly articulate ten different reasons why that particular game was not an appropriate object of desire for someone too young to count nine bracelets without effort. Her logic was flailing for a foothold in this totally illogical argument, all because she was afraid, or unable, to give that firm and definite "no" that mothers have mastered. She just couldn't produce the kind of "no" that rules out any further need for explanation (some moms might add, "Because I said so;" mine usually finished with "Period. End of report"). If I were this lady, I'd be praying that there would be a sudden rush for the Beer-opoly games, frenzied customers snatching them from the shelf. That way, I'd be able to use the only phrase I'd ever used to successfully deny a child something: the inarguably terminal "all gone."
For my lack of ability to deliver that powerful "no," I've dragged a two-year old on a giant stuffed orca through her house for what seemed like hours, past the point at which my knees were buckling and my vertebrae fusing, stifling cries of agony as she didn't supress squeals of glee that seemed to mock my pain. I couldn't formulate a sound argument for "again!" despite employing every rhetorical strategy I could summon. "One more time," I gasped between back spasms. The child echoed, signalling agreement with my terms. "One more time! One more time!" Lulled into a false sense of impending relief, and wanting to make the last orca-ride a memorable one, I'd pull with extra vigor, or take a new route around the coffee table. In doing so, I sealed my fate: the gleeful cry of "again!" lacked any recognition that it was clearly in violation of our agreement.
"But...but..."
"Again! Again!"
"Okay, ONE more time?"
"One more time!"
I knew that, somehow, I had to get the orca out from under the kid and out of her sight, but the sleight of hand to pull that off was way beyond my grasp. It might come down to this: I would have to destroy the orca, all at once, rendering it unrideable before the inevitable screams of protest could stop me. Somehow, though, I had to unsheath my only rhetorical weapon. But "all gone" wouldn't work until this cursed stuffed animal was actually all gone, and it was made of quality materials: it could last for thousands of trips. It was likely to outlast my back by a long shot, and it had already left my belief in free will in its cuddly wake. Mastery of my fate? All gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment