I was once forced to take a babysitting class in middle school and it was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. The teacher was an older woman with pristine Beatle hair whose eyes were always open just a little too wide. She talked of how babies were angels sent from heaven. I also remember stabbing the guy next to me with my pencil because I found out he clipped his fingernails with a scissor and didn’t bite them like an actual, civilized child. I taught him a lesson that day. He’d learn it then, from me, so that he didn’t have a rude awakening later on in life, with the wrong guy.
For the final project we had to change a robot baby’s diaper. I held the baby by its foot, upside down as I changed it, because it was 100% a robot, but I got in trouble and failed the assignment for this.
I fucking digress.
I can get on board with this woman—just as long as we aren’t sharing a goddamn room. I think children are special because they’re uncorrupt. They don’t yet know how to manipulate or cheat. But also two year old’s statistically commit the most assaults. But it’s all in good faith. This surprises people, but I actually like children—although I have a range, kinda how pedophiles do. I’d say, one year old to seven. Then they start to turn.
It must be on purpose, making them cute and all. If babies were born looking like Danny DeVito instead of the Michelin man, we’d die out because nobody would want to raise the thing. It’s the same reason they make sex so good. Don’t say it—don’t fucking say it. I know. I know, okay?
So when Anders said he was bored after breakfast one morning, naturally, I suggested we go to Chuck E Cheese.
“Where the hell are you?” Anders calls. I hear him coming closer, although his voice is muffled.
I am knee-deep at the bottom of the ball pit. It’s been at least a half hour. I have transcended time and gravity. I’ve reached a meditative state where what enters my head is only what I want to pass through. Like reruns of Gravity Falls. This is the closest I am to being there: complete darkness and zero stimulation. The screaming children are no more—this was the state every drinking parent tried and failed to achieve.
This is the hard part though: revealing that I am a 20 year old, hiding at the bottom of a children’s ball pit for the past half hour. I hadn’t been doing anything weird—at least, not the kind of weird they’d care about. There is no story here.
“Jamie!” Anders yells again. My arm shoots out and grabs his ankle. I rise to face him. He’s completely unphased, the way he is.
“Creep,” is what he says.
When I look around, none of the parents are staring. I am not special.
I pick up one of the balls and start tossing it up and down. It’s pretty okay. It’s fun, I guess. It’s a ball. A well shaped ball—a sphere, in fact.
Things are going pretty good as it comes up, and down, and up, and down—but never did I think Jamie’s Theory on Small Children could be shattered so quickly.
“That’s my ball.”
I turn to face a small gremlin of a child. He somehow manages to have this may I speak to the manager type haircut, but also he’s wearing plaid suspenders. His entire existence makes no sense.
“Huh?”
“I want that ball,” he says again while making heavy, unbreaking eye contact, in the way children really shouldn’t.
I can feel Anders shift uncomfortably next to me.
“What about that one?” I point to a section next to him that probably contains 100 or so other balls.
“But that one’s mine,” he whines.
I start losing my patience, because he isn’t leaving and it’s not really funny anymore. “Dude, there’s literally a million just like it,” he starts making that face. It scrunches up and starts turning red.
“Hey, don’t cry—look,” I pick up one in front of him and try to hand it over. He grasps firmly and throws it straight down, full force.
“It’s MINE!” he shrieks, high-pitched, and some kids turn their heads—and listen, he kept it together for longer than I expected, but here is when he loses it.
Clawing at my shirt, he tries to climb my entire arm to reach his crappy little ball. He’s stretching it out. It’s got a bowl of Pho on it and it reads “Pho-Sho!” This is fucking unacceptable.
“HEY!” I yell and try to subdue him by continuing to yell. “Where the hell are your parents?!”
He struggles more, even though I’m not fighting him back. He’s a ball of frustration, making obnoxious screeching noises that sound like a sporadically deflating balloon while acting like if he doesn’t get his ball, it’ll be the end of the fucking world—and maybe he’s right.
But honestly, I couldn’t care less. There was no fucking way I would be dragged into a four year old’s internal frustrations because he was dragged into his parent’s dysfunctional marriage as they tried to “work on things.” I wanted to tell him, simply, “Listen kid, ever heard of Big Brother Big Sister? That’s where kids like you go when they give up—and you should do everyone a favor and just give up.”
This is it for me. I bring my arms back and shove him easily onto the floor above us.
There is a moment of silence. The air around us tenses, and I think time temporarily stops. It’s like my meditative journey, except different.
His face begins to twist.
“No.” I say. His breath quickens, and it’s the only fucking sound in the Chuck E Cheese.
Then, the flood gates erupt.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
The scream, I’m sure, is louder than his lungs can humanly handle.
I just can’t imagine what my face must have looked like.
“Let’s go,” is what Anders says when he finally decides to speak up. He grabs me by the arm and drags me to the other side of the pit while the screaming continues. Stares are drawn, and parents huddle to the child, thinking I must have broken his femur.
He takes me to the back entrance and slams the door. Not an entrance. For the maintenance staff. We face a parking lot with a river down the hill.
He pulls out a cigarette, jams it in my mouth and lights it straight away. I finally breathe out. I feel like telling some made up story in a British accent in order to disassociate. We say nothing.
I pushed a kid in Chuck E Cheese, and now, we wait for the cops to come arrest me.