Here at Children Kids, we take pride in our stories, knowing that we have exhausted all means of research to pin down the mannerisms of today’s children, so that we may carry their interactions with one another honestly into our tales. Right when we think that we’ve witnessed just about all that human little ones can offer, they turn us on our ear, surprising us with their sticktoitivness. The following is a study that took course over a recent weekend. I was invited to eat dinner with my brother and his family, (who happen to house two of our Children Kids voices) and during dessert I was presented with yet another opportunity to study the characteristics of the young ones. While chewing on a deliciously heavy brownie, my nephew, Hayden, asked me if I knew of a way he could earn some money. Being the homeless, and horrible uncle that I am, I spit my brownie out onto my plate, and flattened it with a fork. My first thought was to have him eat it for the spending cash he desired, but that appeared a touch too predictable. Instead I craftily carved a smiley face into the slobber covered brownie, and told him that I would give him ten dollars if he took care of his pre-chewed brownie baby for the entire day. That meant that if I told him it needed to be fed and burped, he had the honors, if it needed to be changed, he was the responsible party, and if it threw a rock at a neighborhood child, he had to explain to the parents why their kid was missing a tooth.
I made this deal, believing that at the end of the day I would still have my ten dollars, and my nephew would have nothing but the stink of failure on him, knowing that he can never best me (A win-win situation for me, as I have grown suspicious as of late, that he wants to kill me and claim my women as his own).
As the day progressed, I randomly assigned tasks of parenthood to him, such as filling out head-start papers for the brownie baby, and scolding it because it left the refrigerator door open. Malcontent took me, and I became ever more and more flustered to see him take such good care of his new found child. He completed each task as a responsible parent should. It was time to really test him. I framed the brownie baby by smearing a little of him on a rock and hurling it towards a buck-toothed girl on a big wheel, smashing her right on the eye. Hilarious. As I hid behind a bush and watched my nephew handle her parents like a champ, even asking to have the doctor’s bill sent to him, a change took place in me. Seeing him interact with and even stick up for his brownie, as well as witnessing all of the love it began to return to him, planted a jealous seed in my heart. After all, it was me, not my nephew who had carried it in my mouth. I was the one who had birthed it into this world onto a plate. It even had my eyes. I wanted my baby back, but I had to wait for the right time to act.
A few hours later, Hayden set his brownie baby down for a nap, but unknown to him, I had disguised myself as a crib, and he had set the brownie right onto my chest. As soon as the door was closed I sat up, victorious, with my brownie in my arms. My joy vanished as I looked into its eyes, and realized that it had no idea who I was. Though it was smiling, I could sense a little fear. The simple truth was my baby didn’t know me. Hayden was its father now. I choked the truth down, said my farewells, and left the room.
Hayden won his ten dollars, and he promised me that he would set the money aside for the brownie’s education. Also, the little girl on the big wheel died. So that was good.
