little boy shopping

i am at the atlantic center. the atlantic center is what most of brooklyn has instead of a mall. i am in line at a discount department store, more or less, waiting to pay. there are thirteen people in line in front of me and three open registers. register three is occupied by a man who appears to be, fairly successfully, trying to pick up the woman behind the counter. i say this because the entire time i wait in line, he never leaves and she never calls a new customer. he keeps walking around the front of the store, getting more things for her to ring up, then he leans way over and talks to her in a low voice that draws lots of giggles from her. so there are thirteen people in line and two open registers.

so i am waiting. behind me i hear a fairly reckless cart rattling up and of course it slams right into the back of me. hard. i turn around to glare and there is a little boy, maybe eight, staring right at me, looking a little lost but also just a little triumphant. he is one of those children whose face is still cuddled in baby fat, with huge dark eyes set on top of cheeks that would make one of those pinching grannies nearly faint. if he grows up, if i do not strangle his sweet self right this minute, girls will write his name on their notebooks in bubble letters. but there is some question about his future right now. he looks thrilled to have hit me with his cart. his mother is nowhere so i sigh and turn around, tell myself i am off duty, that disciplining someone else's child is not my job during the summer.

he is joined a few minutes later by a mother who can only be described as frazzled. her entire life appears to consist of attempts to prevent him from doing things and then attempts to redirect or repair whatever he has done. in what will eventually seem like three hours that we are in line together she will be unsuccessful in every single attempt. the line is flanked by product- towels and soaps and books and things made of glass. he touches every single one, moving each item slightly with his tornadic little hands. he sees a backpack and screams out to all who will listen that this backpack has a character from a t.v. show right there on it. a show he watches! he emphasizes his proclamation by grabbing the backpack and whipping it up to his mother's eye level. but you already know that a backpack sitting on a shelf with towels and soaps and books and things made of glass will only have its straps wrapped around the glass things. in this case, a very large vase. which i shove back onto the shelf with my foot.

the child is excited about everything. "look, paper towels!" "hey, mom. MOM! look! brown flip flops!" and i can almost hear his mother wilting behind me. she gives in and gives him the cart again. now, i may be one to judge folks, but i try to avoid doing too much judging of strangers publicly. but then she already knows this child is going to slam that cart right into me again and she has decided she would rather sacrifice me than listen to her little angel any longer and this is ugly. selfish. so when she begins yelling at him to stopstopstop i figure he and the cart are pretty close and then he slams into me again and plows on past. i grab the front of the cart which surprises him. he sizes me up to see just how much alike we might be. i push the cart back, slowly, toward where his mother is waiting, saying and doing exactly nothing. i tell the child very calmly and clearly that his behavior is rude and he needs to stop slamming the cart into me. he looks at me like i am from somewhere he's never heard of, like i am surrounded by flames. he lets go of the cart but continues to smile. it is not a nasty smile. it is genuine and pretty and guileless. behind me there is a very low and tense conversation where his mom's voice goes on for long stretches and he punctuates things with his own little voice.

i am summoned to the register by a cashier and am paying when the child and his mother are called to the register two past me. she walks by pushing the cart, slowly, leaning on it heavily, like someone much older. he saunters behind her, thrilled to be in the world. when he is even with me, he drags his arm across my back, the way you see children slap their hands along fences or light posts. smack. drag. like i am something other than a person. i start thinking now about what we will do in a few years when he shows up in my class able to see and hear every single thing in the world all at once, worried that he will hear once again that these are liabilities, not superpowers.