Kid-ding

"I'm going to be away this weekend... Is it OK if I leave T (speaker's five-year old son) here? He just loves playing with you"

In spite of being a speech-language pathologist (well, almost), and 'in spite of being a girl', as some people like to point out, I detest kids. At least, most of them. A lot of my work centres around children; I don't mind children who have problems, but I DO mind those who don't have problems, but behave as if they do. And T is most definitely one of them.

"Why, of course, auntie. He's such a sweet kid. I'm sure we'll have a great weekend. It's no problem at all... Really!" At the same time, I'm thinking, "If I were Pinocchio, my nose would've been digging into lunar soil".

"If you don't mind, S (five-year old girl, T's friend) is going to be here in an hour or so. Maybe she can spend the afternoon with T... You can sit back and watch them play, it's a lot easier for you that way. Just see that they don't get into one of their violent squabbles." With that, she was gone. Leaving me alone with T, with less than an hour to get all breakable things out of the way before S turned up.

As it turned out, the girl wasn't that hard to manage. All I had to do was let her sit on me and kick me repeatedly in the shins. The boy, on the other hand, wasn't satisfied with the rather dull activity of pulling my hair out by the roots. Tiring of that activity pretty fast, he shoved the girl off my lap, stood on me (wearing his Bubblegummers with God-only-knows what unspeakable filth on the soles), and punched me in the face to get my attention (I wasn't supposed to be looking at the girl who was now howling on the floor). "FOOD!", he yelled. Emptying my lap of a boy who was chanting "Food. Food. Food. Food", and careful not to step over the bawling girl, I walked over to the telephone and called my cousin, who had very kindly agreed to take us out for lunch.

We went to one of the 'big' restaurants in town. A very unfortunate decision, as it turned out to be. Our T made a beeline for an elderly man enjoying his fish, and said in a loud, clear voice that carried right ti the other side of the hall, " NEVER eat fish. Fish is yucky. Cheeeeeeeee!" And with his fingers clamping his nose, he ran back to us. The clink of cutlery had suddenly stopped, and I could feel two dozen pairs of eyes focusing on me. Any charitable floor would've opened up and swallowed me whole, but this one didn't and let me enjoy my moment of unadulterated embarrassment.

Luckily, S went back home after lunch. The rest of the day passed quite pleasantly, except for random incidents of hair-pulling, glass-breaking, yelling for no reason... the usual stuff. The kid slept a bit, while I enjoyed myself, using his crayons and his coloring books. Dinner was bearable too, owing to the presence of several older, wiser and stricter adults at the table. I got to read him a story (which I didn't mind at all), answer his "Why?" at the end of every sentence (which got very tiring after a while... I have a rather limited imagination), and then put him to bed. Peace!

On Sunday, we watched a lot of TV... Barney The Purple Dinosaur, Bob The Builder, Clifford The Big Red Dog, Elmo, and, for some reason, Ed, Edd & Eddy, which HAS to be one of the ugliest cartoons ever. My tastes are slightly different from his, but I wasn't going to grapple with a five-year old for the remote. But I wasn't overly enthusiastic about playing board games with him for hours on end. Imagine having to play Snakes and Ladders again and again and again and again and again. And again. AND losing every single time, on purpose, because he's 'still a kid'. Kinda hard on a 20-year old.

That evening, his mom came to pick him up. T bolted out of the room we were playing in and hurled himself at her. "Can we stay here amma? With Neha akka? Please? Please please please please?" That's when I felt a little guilty... The little thing DOES seem to like me, I thought. Aloud, I said, "Why don't you come over next weekend too? We could play with your new water gun (the truth- I wanted to play with his new water gun)..."

"You don't mind? Are you sure? "

"Absolutely. I'd love to have him over." Maybe I mean it. May be.

"Can S come too?" T wanted to know.

Uh oh. "Uhm... Sure, why not... Yes, of course."

T and his mom grin and disappear. I grin too... a weird, twisted grimace. Shaan's song, "Kya karoon, mujhe naa kehna nahin aata" is playing in my head. It's only five days to the next weekend. Only five.