It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm way tired. I think it's from waking up at 6:30 am because I had to go to the bathroom, and then falling asleep again so heavily that my travel alarm clock completely jarred me awake at 7:30. Each of the five times I hit the snooze button (yes, I also wade into pools and the ocean inch by inch), I'd fall right back to sleep again.
Last night was a bit of late nighter for me, as Haruway (woman with the 6 sisters) and I prepared for our speaking exam, scheduled for tomorrow. The first part will be us playacting a situation (the teacher will pick one out of 18), and then the second part is our individual interviews with the teacher. The teacher paired Haruway and me together, so we practiced about half of the conversations last night, til 10:30 or so. She brought a box of donuts over, and I supplied some drinks and potato chips, so we had a fine old time stuffing ourselves (fortunately, Haruway eats about as much as I do, so I don't feel bad about stuffing my face).
Because I was up late, I'm rather crankified today. I usually get on the last car on the subway train, as it's usually the least full and I can sometimes even sit down, but today it was full of little kids, so I ran over to the next car. Unfortunately, it too was full of little kids, and more crowded than the first car. Yesterday I sat in a car with about 30 kids and it was fine, but today I couldn't deal with munchkin chatter, so I got off at the next stop and waited for the next train.
What can I tell ya? When I'm cranky, I'm cranky. I was also starving, and that didn't help one bit.
In my defense, I do sometimes like watching kids (from a distance). Not as amusing as animals, but close to it sometimes. Yesterday, like I said (I'm repeating myself because I'm so darn tired - sorry), I was sitting in the train when 30 kids piled in, herded in by their teachers. Yes, I did move seats so as not to be surrounded by nose-picking brats -- oops, I mean, by darling little munchkins -- but only once. I bore the three kids who sat next to me -- one of which had shoved her pinky to the second joint up her honker -- with Job-like patience.
The kids were pretty quiet and well-behaved, which I appreciated. There was a young mother also on the train who keep feeding her little baby sweets. The baby was probably about 2 years old: just able to walk without falling in the swaying subway car. He was wearing a bright turquoise jacket with yellow trim, and pants with the opposite color scheme.
The baby walked by himself away from his mother, who didn't seem too alarmed. On his way back from about 10 feet away, he encountered one of the teachers of the older kids, who picked him up (much to his consternation -- that baby wanted to WALK) and delivered him to his mother.
I was surprised that the mother let him walk around by himself. If the kid were mine (perish the thought! consign it to the bottom of the sea!), I would have been nervous about him straying so far from me on public transportation. But she didn't seem too concerned.
(She also, when the baby accidentally spit out his candy, took out a tissue and picked it up off the ground.)
Earlier this week, on a relatively empty train car, there was a bi-racial kid walking back and forth, with his Caucasian father in close pursuit. Everyone on the train was captivated by the kid, who sounded like his primary language was Korean. Two teenage girls with ballerina hairstyles (pulled back severely and pinned in several places) watched him and giggled and said hello everytime he passed by (the kid would say hello too). When they got off at their stop, they said, "Okay, see you later!," and one of them crouched down to shake the kid's little hand. An older woman asked the father, "How old is he?" and the guy answered in Korean, "3 years old."
A smiling older man asked the kid, "And where are you going?" but to no avail -- the kid was bent on making it to the end of the train, where he would pretend to crash into the wall and would say, "Ouch!" Whereupon his father also would crashed into the wall and say, "Ouch!" The same succession of events in the opposite direction would then occur: hello to the girls, determined progress to the end of the car, crash, "Ouch!", crash, "Ouch!"
This continued for at least the 10 minutes that we all shared the same train car. I'm sure it started as soon as the pair got on the train.
In preparing to leave the subway, the father and son comedy act continued: he pulled the kid's hood over his head, put him into a carrier, and slung him on his back, but he could see in the subway glass that the kid had pulled the hood right off. So with a firm but amused, "Oh, no you don't," he put the carrier down again, pulled out a bright blue hat with yellow stegasaurus-like triangles of plush along the middle, plunked it on the kid's head, and hoisted the whole package on his back again. And then stepped off the train.
Okay, I was utterly charmed along with the rest of the passengers. See, I'm not the the Wicked Witch of the East all the time.
I did find it interesting that everyone was so taken with this bi-racial kid, and wondered how they would all receive him if he were 15 years older. Wonder how the bi-racial thing goes over here?