Children. I love them. I spend many, many hours babysitting, and even when I'm not tyed down with deals to spend time with them, I play with them. The days of my childhood are fresh in my mind, and I always like to revisit them...by playing memories in my head, or by playing with kids and acting like a kid again. It's so much fun. Children are so carefree, so innocent. And this weekend, I spent a ton of time with children. I babysat Saturday night, and Sunday. Sunday, I spent time with four families of kids. All these kids had different backgrounds, different parents, siblings, etcetera, and they were sharing an experience together of running through the sprinklers. I remember the days I used to run through the sprinklers. I loved it. I would run naked in my backyard, and didn't care about a thing. No one could see me, and those that could would just think "Oh, a little naked girl. Whatever." The state of oblivion is an exquisite one. I was oblivious to the fact that my body could look different and less perfect than anyone else's, or that people would judge me for my actions, think me insane, stupid, irresponsible, annoying. And this is what these children were doing. It was so lovely, so innocent, so sweet. Some of them actually had umbrellas, and they ran through the sprinklers shielding themselves from the cool water. Others were picking it up, and splashing the children with umbrellas, attempting to get the water under the umbrellas. I thought about how much of the world they were protected from. They knew nothing of materialism, power-hunger, greed, ostracism, poverty, disloyalty. I sat back and watched, intrigued with their oblivion to the realities of the world.


Then, things changed.

There is a child there, who I often babysit. She is a pistol, one who loves to boss people around, and attempt to manipulate whoever she can to get what she wants. She lies, she pushes, she finds her own little clever ways to manipulate. And she is just a child. She picked up a recorder, and told us she knew how to play. I remember the days I played recorder...all of fourth grade, actually. And she blew into it, attempting to play. Let me tell you...throw anyone out the window who has the nerve to give a recorder to little kids! Ahhh! It sounded horrible. I wanted so badly to plug my ears, but here she was, trying to please me, trying to recieve and aesthetic response from me. Of course, I slipped into my role. This child goes above and beyond for accolades. She once told me she composed her own songs for the guitar, and she played me the song. Each note, each word, came from a show my sister watches on the Disney Channel. I don't want to completely rip her up with my words. She is a young child, and doesn't know anything. But let me tell you this...she lied. She felt she had a need to lie to impress others. Under her shell of upmost confidence is a small, shaky child who does not know how to be accepted and loved for who she is. The roots possibly come from her parents, or maybe it's just the way she is. But the point I've been trying to make... children appear to live innocent, idealistic lives. However, they are just oblivious to the realities that live under their very skin. This child, who has developed lying, decietful ways, is the same as she will be when she is older. Everything starts young. Children have a hunger for materialism just as theri parents do. Children have a drive to control and manipulate just as adults. They just don't know how to bring that out yet, or how to even recognize it. Not all children, obviously, have these bad traits. It's just that if they will ever have those bad traits, and no one is perfect, so many people do, they develop them young. Thus, you can observe a child, and know what is to come in their development. You can tell who they are, what they might become. Not exactly what they will become, but what possibilies are present. How haunting.

Eck. This day started horribly. I was running late to begin with, and to make it on time, would probably have to sprint from the parking lot to my class. I knew I'd have to drive quickly, since I usually only go the speed limit. Turns out, I couldn't even go the speed limit. The first thing I noticed was that my car accelerated really slowly. It accelerates slowly to begin with, but now it was like..."Hello? I'm pressing the gas, hun, wanna go?" Then, when I did go, even at twenty miles per hour, the engine sounded very, very loud, and I checked the RPMs, and they were up there, between four and five thousand. Now, if you get to six thousand, it is deadly for the engine. It really would not be a good idea for me to ruin the engine, now would it? I kept going slow. The gears would not change! Sometimes, they did change, but the car was acting so weird. When I got to Bowles, which I could only go on at about 25 miles per hour, the car was acting even weirder. Sometimes, it'd be going. And sometimes, it felt like it was just rolling. I stopped at the stoplight, and was on the verge of tears. For crying out loud, I'm on transmission number two, and it decides to go bonkers again. Then, when it was time to go, because the light turned green (I was still in drive), so I first let the break off. And it was very strange...the car rolled backwards. Now, when you are in drive, that is NOT supposed to happen. My transmission was slipping! My car was screwed. When I should have easily made the light, and it turned red with a huge gap in front of me and the poor guy caught behind me glowering at me, I figured I shouldn't even be driving this piece of crap Ford had the nerve to call a car. My dad's office was a block or so away, so I decided to drive there to park. And on the way, the transmission was slipping so badly, it was like a rhythm...glide, jerk, glide, jerk, glide, jerk. It was horrifying. I didn't know if I'd even make it to the parking lot in front of Dad's office. But I did, and just my luck, when I got there, no one was there. So I called home, where no one answered, and sobbed a message on the machine hoping someone would call. I tried again later, and begged for someone to pick up the phone, and my dad finally did. So when he came to work, he drove me to school. We left the car in the parking lot, because it would have to be towed, for sure. BTW, this is the second time my purple people eater is getting towed. So...yeah. I was only thirty minutes late to school, man. It was great. Luckily, the day got much better after that. We won in tennis, and I enjoyed many of my classes. It was a good day. I won't let the retardo car ruin it!