 For some time
now I have observed the behavior of various tots, including my own nieces and
nephews, children of friends, and the young persons in the day care center
downstairs from our office. After prolonged observation I'm afraid I can only
come up with five words to sum up their behavior: It's totally out of hand.
You say, "What
do you expect, they're children, they've got high spirits." Ah. But how do you
explain this? The other evening I was at my sister's house, and my niece, the
tot Jane E. Frazier, was fiddling with a plate of sliced Honeybaked ham that
was sitting on the table and that we were planning to eat for dinner. I stood
guarding the ham because Jane E. Frazier has a history of squishing her fingers
into food. Food I'm going to eat! I don't want her-or anybody's-grubby little
mitts in my food. Is that so unreasonable? Is that a crime?
In any event, I
turned for a moment and she grabbed the top of the ham, which was covered,
fortunately, by aluminum foil, and started squishing it and squeezing it. I
cried "Get out of there!" and picked her up to take her away, but Jane E.
Frazier clung tenaciously to the ham, lifting it along with her. The ham was
off the ground and being severely manhandled. That's right. My dinner. I can't
eat mangled ham that's been carried around and has little handprints on
it-though ultimately I did, of course, because I was so hungry. But I'm a
sensitive type, and these things bother me. You say, "sure, that'd bother
anybody." It's a disgraceful episode, no two ways about it.
But no different
from what I see every day. The day care center downstairs is filled with this
kind of thing. I have to wade my way through an ocean of tots every day as I
enter and exit the building. And they're not sitting quietly on a blanket as I
did when I was that age. They're shrieking and squealing and clumsily throwing
balls at each other. Guess whose shins these balls invariably bounce off of?
That's right. Mine. Because I'm filled with love I pick the ball up and gently
hand it back to the offending tot instead of drop-kicking it right out of the
building as I should. "Well, you're nicer than most," you say.
Don't I know it.
I'm taken advantage of because of it. These people never get out of the way
when I'm trying to go about my business. They stand in the doorway of the hall
that directly accesses our office. You have to loudly say "Excuse me" and then
they'll just look up at you blankly. Hello down there! You're impeding traffic!
Let's get off the schneid here if you don't mind terribly! I can't count the
number of times I've had to nudge a toddler out of that doorway. This is
time-consuming work and I don't get paid for it. But I don't complain.
All I know is,
when I was three or four years old I wasn't running around screaming and
blocking doorways and bothering decent people. You could place me on any flat
surface, hand me a good book, and I'd occupy myself for hours and then quietly
go off to bed. I wasn't whining and demanding toys and crying I want this and I
want that. No, usually the only words out of my mouth were "May I help you?" I
combed my own hair, too. I did everything to make my life easier for my
parents.
However, here at
the day care center, parents can barely get their tots out of their cars to go
into the facility. Once they do, these children poke and shuffle along outside
the building while their parents patiently hold the door for them. You know
these parents are thinking, Let's make it today.
My parents never had that trouble with me. I'd jump smartly out of the car, run
ahead and hold doors open for them, and then ask, "May I read now?"
In my day, if
you behaved like the various tots and toddlers I see hanging around here you'd
end up in reform school and then the penitentiary.
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Quirkee Voices 
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