We met my friend D and her little boy Z at the park. There was climbing and sliding and swinging–you know, the usual. There were two teenagers canoodling at the top of out of the play structures, lying indolently on the platform and blocking it off from children. Pissed (I just started my period; that’s my excuse) I climbed up there with Baby on my hip and gave them an earful. I said things like “you aren’t between the ages of 2 and 5 at all, and that’s what the sign says this playground is for!” and used the word “inappropriate” an unaccountably large number of times and I think I once paired it with “behavior.” I’m surprised I didn’t conjecture anything about what their mothers would think. After they skadoodled, one little girl told me plaintively, “they were here for an hour!” That’s me, a crazy and apparently quite aged lady who enjoys yelling at innocent teenagers just looking for a shady place to flirt.
This park is also frequented by a chubby, red-haired little boy about eight years old. He always wears black shoes, black pants, a black Batman T-shirt, and, oh yes, a black cape and mask. He talks a lot about bad guys and carefully selects various sticks to pretend they are some kind of weaponry associated with his craft. He would be a lot scarier if he weren’t constantly nibbling on a drooping corner of his mask like a little bunny. My friend’s kid thinks this kid is amazingly awesome (he calls him “The Man”) and follows him around. And of course Baby follows him around, so they formed this little duckling-like parade today while Batman brandished assorted bits of tree detritus and ate his costume.
Next to the park is a library where we later went to get new books and return old ones. As we were walking out, I ran into the woman (with her kids) who was the leader of my local La Leche League back when Baby was a newborn. I said hello, she didn’t recognize me, I didn’t expect her to. I told her it had been a while, I asked her was she still leading, she responded, we bade each other farewell, and that was that. I didn’t feel the need to regale her with tales of all my insane pumping (though if she could have placed me, I’m sure she would have wondered what happened with that) or justify my stopping or anything like that. Refreshing to consider how far I’ve come on that.
And nice to feel like a member of a community–involved, familiar, cantankerous.
