I Hate the Kids

There's a new girl working at Laser Blazer, Dina. Today, she was telling me about her other job, at one of those Gymboree-type places where kids go to goof around and do gymnastics and stuff. (It's not actually a "Gymboree"-brand children's athletic center. I don't remember the name, but it's some other punny kind of word play based around the notion of young children doing gymnastics).

Anyway, she actually has to go to a seminar in a few weeks to better learn how to play around with other people's kids. Seriously. In Nevada. I started to think (after Dina was done talking, of course) about how patient a person would have to be to work that job. I mean, I get fed up when adult customers bother me at the store.

Like this one big, fat, slovenly weirdo who comes in all the time...He always wants to lean over the counter and chat with you about some dumb crap, like what was going on in the "Roswell" episodes he watched the previous night or what movies he saw over the weekend that were, of course, unsatisfying, or why such and such old Western hasn't come out in widescreen format or something.

But you never want to actually talk with him, for several reasons. He's really stupid, for one, but not just dull and boring like most stupid people, but also opinionated! There's nothing worse than a lame guy without critical thinking skills who considers himself an intelligent individual with worthwhile observations about the world around him.

Also, he kind of smells. Not in that way like he hasn't showered in days. We occasionally get one or two of those guys, but that's a story for a different post. He just kind of smells funny, like he's wearing unwashed clothes, or he was just locked in an airtight container with a corpse, a French soccer club and a gorilla smoking a hookah. You know, just generally stinky.

One day he came in and, I swear to God, he had chocolate smeared all over his face. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. (I ended up doing neither, but just turned around and pretending to be busy cleaning discs, hoping he wouldn't notice me. But he did.)

Anyway, that's how annoyed I get with regular, grown people. I can't imagine a job where I was forced to deal not only with them but with their ill-tempered, disease-infested, mean-spirited, spoiled, petty, immature, barely-potty trained demon spawn. I'm not saying that all children are this way. Just all the children I've ever encountered. Those kids who work the sweatshops in China and the Phillipines? They're probably exceedingly well-mannered.

I couldn't really stand kids, even when I was a kid. Now that I'm grown and I recognize my hatred of children, it has given me a newfound understanding of my childhood. I was a self-hating child. I realized my general ineptitude, my lack of understanding of the world around me, and found it constantly frustrating. I'd always want to sit at the grown-up table, to read the grown-up books and to see the R-rated movies.

I hated being forced to hang out with other children, with whom I could never really relate on any level. I always hated sports, playing them and watching them. Even though I liked video games, as did many other children, I liked playing them by myself more than head-to-head competition with friends, which I found frustrating and unsatisfying.

It all makes so much sense now! As a kid, of course, if you hate kids, find them spazzy and obnoxious and impossible to spend any time around, you become anti-social. Which is exactly what I was. At the time, I thought I had done something wrong, that I couldn't make friends because I was somehow incapable of acting a certain way around others. Now I realize it was more my own lack of interest and enthusiasm.

So, if at 8 years old, you're already unable to talk to other children, imagine how you get when you're 26. I can honestly say that it's easier to communicate with reptiles at this point in my life. I have more in common with 26-year-old apes than 6 year old humans. (Seriously...you guys can't see my bedroom right now, but TRUST ME.)

And then there's Dina, around my age but somehow capable of not just interaction with kids but pleasant, mutually-enjoyed interaction. How is such a thing possible? She told me that a kid was calling her name the other day, and when she turned around to see what he wanted, he sneezed right in her face. That would be the day I resigned from Gym-Play-sium or whatever the fuck they call it. For her, it was just another day at work. Amazing.