Little kids make the world go ’round. It’s not adults, what with our complicated and wanton desires, but the wee ones who gently coax tribute from their parents and families and everyone else who thinks that no cuteness shall go unrewarded.
Which brings me to my niece. She turned 2 not all that long ago, and the occasion called for a party replete with Disney theme and costumes and about 50 mylar balloons that needed to be carried 4 long blocks by your author because there was no room in anyone’s car and because it seemed like a pretty gnarly adventure at least until they got tangled up in some equally gnarly tree branches. But I digress.
She’s smart and can speak clearly beyond the usual grunting and screaming. She eats like there’s no tomorrow, and upon trying to pick her up the first word to come to most people’s minds is “heavy.”
More importantly, though, this little girl finally made me realize that I don’t hate kids, after all.
In college I volunteered for two years at a Vietnamese community center on Geary, doing my best to tutor and teach despite the pushback and brattiness and budding ghetto-ness of the kids that spent their Friday afternoons there. But it didn’t work, and of all things it made me never want to go near kids ever again, though that’s putting it lightly.
All that changed when my niece was born. She was handed to me about a week out of the womb and was roughly the size of a Papalote triple-threat burrito*. And within a split second, I hadn’t even brought her close yet, she pooped.
Feeling that vibration and realizing what happened (and also being unfamiliar with remedial measures) initially horrified me, but at that moment I realized that these kinds of things happen, naturally. Babies poop and cry, because they’re not quite aware of the intricacies of how to run to the bathroom or wipe up or grab a bite to eat just yet.
Extrapolating it a bit, maybe the punkass kids talking back to me at the community center so many years before didn’t know any better, either. They weren’t aware that I was using my free time to help them and that I would’ve appreciated if they shut their yaps for just a few minutes so we can get through their homework, upon whose conclusion the screaming may begin again in earnest.
So that’s why kids do what they do, and, hopefully, cut the crap as they mature. Now I love kids, and have the patience to deal with them. While I won’t be running a daycare anytime soon, having kids in my presence is no longer something I dread.
And it all started with the poop. Maybe it wasn’t the most sanitary epiphany the world has ever seen, but I’ll take it.
