Where to begin…where to begin..where to begin…
I dont like kids
Thats a beginning
Here’s another
26 years ago (give or take, Im like really bad at math) I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. It was the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. My mom wasn’t sick. My dad and I spent two or three days a week at his best friend, Walters, house. My dad and Walter would go and play basket ball and I taught Walters little girl how to read. She was 4 and SUCH a headache. She couldn’t sit still for anything. But I had a schedule worked out. We would walk to the park and swing for awhile and then we would read and then repeat. Or something. It was a long time ago. The next summer I did the same thing with my older cousin Pams little girl. Just substitute the swings for a puzzle. In the fourth grade I asked if I could skip recess and volunteer in the kindergarten class and help them learn to read.
I didn’t like kids. In the fourth grade my class became obsessed with this game where they would chase each other, it was some hyped up version of tag or something. I remember the crush of my life caught me one day, or rather, I got sick of running (I had a book to read, people!) and let him catch me.
He grabbed my hands, and then my wrists and laughed, “Gotcha!”
I shifted from foot to foot. So, so cute this boy. I had been absolutely in love with him since 2nd grade. Love at first sight. We had a minor setback in 3rd grade when he struggled over how to pronounce a word during reading circle. I told him how I thought it was pronounced (I was wrong). He was embarassed and mad at me. I was embarrassed and mad at me (this is what I get for speaking up, I thought.). But here we were. Sophisticated and mature fourth graders (like a less sexy (and well, violent) version of a Jackie Collins novel. “You’ve got me. Now what?”
He let go. “I dunno? You catch me?”
And then he ran off.
And I went to sit on the tall wall with my novel. Kids. Sigh.
We had another embarrassing encounter in 5th grade when I walked in on the boys watching the “Body Changes” video after I was late volunteering with the kindergartners. It was 2 more years before I learned that we all saw the same exact video. I’ll let you know if I ever get over the embarrassment of walking into a dark classroom with a full-on erection on the projector and TP (the crush of my young life) shouting, “GET OUTTA HERE, ISA!”
Anyway.
17 years ago I joined my church and about 5 years after that I was asked to help in the kids rooms. I didn’t want to. I dont like kids, I whined. But my friend was in charge of the kids room and there was no one else to help and so there I was. For next 3 years. It was awful! My friend once said to me as we were meeting in her house to go over activities for the kiddos for the next day and her daughter was crawling all over me, “You look like a person who hates cats who has cats crawling all over them!”. And then she laughed like the lunatic that she is.

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    I do like kids. But imaging kids as cats tickled me. Lol.

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    I can relate to the last part. I don’t like dogs. And when I visited someone’s house, her chihuahua just would not leave my lap. 🙁

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    I used to end my every church lesson to the kids, “You know, I don’t like kids. But you guys arent that bad!”
    And then someone told me that was akin to a white person saying, “You know I don’t like black people but you aren’t that bad!” So I figured I should stop saying that.
    I still think it sometimes.
    And 10 years ago my mom died. It was awful for all the usual reasons and a few fun isa specific ones. But it was horrible because for the 20 years before she died my dad took care of her. He couldn’t work and take care of her at the same time. She was terrified of nursing homes and for better or for worse made him promise not to put her in one. I honestly don’t think that either of them expected her to live as long as she did or to get as sick as she became. But also, because of his own injury he couldn’t sit, stand or lay down for longer than 2 hours at a time. Constantly lifting her made it worse. They lived off of her disability checks. And when she died of January 2010 all of her government assistance stopped that same month. February came and my dad didn’t have money for rent, groceries, bus fare to his own doctors appointments. He could have applied for a disability check of his own dozens of years ago but he thought it would be greedy. So he didn’t. One check is more than enough.
    I got a second job and moved back in.
    I was only supposed to stay until he found a job.
    Funny how no one wants to hire an over educated 60 year old black man in the near-South who hasn’t worked in 20 years.
    It took almost a year complete for him to get on all of the assistance that he needed to live on his own.
    It was almost 8 years before someone would give him a chance and a job.
    6 months after my mom died I was exhausted. I was working in 3 different libraries across 3 different library systems. But my main library was hiring for a full time Children and Teen Library Assistant.
    I didn’t want it.
    I didn’t want to work with kids.
    But I couldn’t keep working 3 jobs and get my dad to his doctors appointments.
    I was hired because I was the only person who applied.
    My first meeting I learned about 1 in 3 kids being prepared for kindergarten when they started.
    I learned that those 2 kids who weren’t prepared would most likely NEVER catch up to that 1 kid who was prepared.
    I learned that those kids were most likely the kids who came to the libraries that I work in–urban with negligent parents.
    “I don’t even like kids and thats not right!”
    This week has been one of the freaking busiest of my life. We put out our trains and puppets and toys and kids swarmed them. More kids than we normally see (and we normally see a lot). Adults came (I don’t like adults) because they had forgotten about the library and the services that we provide. But they saw all of the kids running up our steps, playing on our grounds, rushing in the doors. They could hear the life and laughter (we are NOT a quiet library) and poked their heads in. And then they came in as well.

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