K8 the GR8

The darnedest thing happened earlier on…

My wee two year old was out in the street playing with our dog.  She was wearing her tatty pink princess dress, which is an item of clothing she obsesses about and has worn for the last three days.  She wore wellington boots, and her brother’s over-sized grey sweater.  Her hair was un brushed and wild.  She looked like a tiny orphan, caught in her own little imaginary world, dancing in puddles and blowing washing-up-liquid bubbles from an old plastic jar. 

Suddenly, her presence on the road was noticed by the other kids on the street, who swarmed outside to her.  She’s a bit of a novelty on the road. I don’t let her out there much because of the weather, and the fact that she has a tendency to invite herself (or just walk in) to other folk’s houses.  As the road became suddenly busier with the sounds of laughter, shouting and heavy footsteps jumping in puddles, I focussed on my kid.  She was oblivious to anything other than her jar of bubbles and her dog.  Every time she blew a bubble, the dog would leap into the air and snap loudly in an attempt to eat it.  This could go on for hours… days, if you’d let them.  Each bubble popped by the dog would be accompanied by peals of mini laughter from the little girl.

Every now and then, however, a bubble would escape and soar upwards over the rooftops and into the sky.  I caught myself staring at these bubbles in horror.  I felt an overwhelming need, like an obsessive compulsion to catch those drifting bubbles filled with the small child’s breath.  It felt like a little part of her innocence was being lost with each inaudible pop above the chaos and curses below.  If I could, I would’ve trapped those bubbles in a jar to keep forever, but I couldn’t, and it felt like my heart was about to break.

But then she came back in to me and hugged my leg before asking for a biscuit, and I found out that all of those lost bubbles were inside of me anyway.   

A ’snot gobbler’ is a phrase coined by my father, to describe any young lad/gurrier, the type of kid who has a perpetual stream of green goo running from nose to upper lip.

This particular snot-gobbler is aged 7, and was sitting on a wall, watching me unpack groceries from the car. 

S.G.: “D’you want a turtle?”

Me: “Say what?”

SG: “I have two turtles buh I’m givin them away ‘cos one bit me.  Me uncle gave them to me for free but I’ll sell them to you for 60 euros.”

Me: “You have a lot to learn about marketing, son.  Why did the turtle bite you?”

SG: *shrugs*  after a long pause; “I was poking its nose.  I wanted to see if its face turned inside out.”

Me: “Did it?”

SG: “Nah, it bit me.  I don’t want it anymore.”

Me: “I’m sure the feeling is mutual.”

SG: “Wha?”

Me: “So have you nothing better to be doing with yourself on a nice day like today?”

SG: ”I’m grounded outside.”

Me: “That’s an oxymoron kid.  What did you do to deserve that?”

SG: “Me mammy went shopping in Tescos and dropped me and me friend into a building site nearby until she was finished.  We were there for ages and got bored so we broke loads o’ windows in the buildings.  Nobody seen us though,  ‘xept mammy.”

Me: “That was kind of stupid, wasn’t it?  A lot of people are going to be very angry about the amount of money they’re going to have to fork out to repair those windows.”

SG: “Don’t care.”

Me: “I would if I were you.  Your fingerprints will be all over that building site.  The police’ll be able to catch you in no time at all, then it’s jail-time for you, kiddo.  You’ll get 25 years for that.”

SG: *wide-eyed*  Shoiyh!!!