Curmudgeon in training

Sometimes I think about those in-training tshirts. You know, the ones that are adorned with horrifying phrases that do not bode well for the future. Things like "MILF in training" or "Diva in training" or "Cougar in training" or "Zombie in training". Some day, there will be a Diva MILF Cougar Zombie army running around the streets and we'll only have ourselves to blame for it--they did give us ample warning that they were training for it, after all. But this is all besides the point. The point is, it's high time that someone makes a "Heinous Old Curmudgeon in Training" t-shirt, so that I would have something to wear.

People often mistake me for a nice person because I only swear at them quietly to myself, only use phrases like "If you don't stop talking I will kick a puppy in the face" in the privacy of my own mind, and even when I am at my surliest, I am still easily tricked into bending to the whims of young children.

Miranda and Clementine are two little girls who live down my street. They adore me, and therefore I cannot stand them. The only person they adore more than me is my dog. They get me and my dog mixed up frequently, which is unsurprising, since Kaitie and I are similar in many ways: We both eat random crap we find on the ground and on ourselves*, we both wander around the house pretending to be from another species**, and we both view Miranda and Clementine with an equal amount of indifference bordering on disdain.

My average interaction with the girls will go like this:
Clementine: Hi Kaitie!
Me: I'm Amy.
Clementine: Kaitie Kaitie Kaitie!
Miranda: Can I walk your dog?
Me: Not today.
Clementine: I'm touching Amy's tail!
Miranda: Can I go with you?
Me: No.
Clementine: Hi Kaitie!
Miranda: My mom says its okay.
Me: No she doesn't.
Miranda: I asked her.
Me: She's not even here.
Clementine: poop!
Miranda: I'm going with you.
Me: Goodbye.

At this point I ignore both of them and walk around the corner of the building, never to be seen again. However, yesterday, Miranda and Clementine were determined to join me on my walk. So I went the other way. Unfortunately, the other way lead to the park, which the girls interpreted as me offering to take them to the park. They were overjoyed and told me we were going on the swings. I told them I was not going to the park, I was going around the park and coming right back. By this time we had crossed the street and were in the park grounds, and I noticed that Clementine was barefoot and had clearly wet herself earlier that day.

Somehow, I was cajoled into walking Clementine back to her house, waiting for her to put on shoes and fight with her sister about whether or not she would put on new pants, come out wearing the same pants and her older sister's shoes, walk her back into the park holding hands. And Miranda got to walk Kaitie. I looked like Mother Theresa.

The next thing I know, I'm running around the park pushing Miranda on the swing and keeping Clementine from shoving Kaitie into the garbage cans and the girls are having the time of their lives and I am realizing I'm actually annoyed that Kaitie is along because she's tired and in pain (arthritis) and wants to go home and I haven't gotten to do under-ducks with Miranda yet.

Do you know how hard it is to get two little girls out of a park and back into their front yard again? Of course you do. It's impossible. I believe that there is some alternate dimension where we're all still stuck on jungle gyms, alternating between waiting for little children to stop building castles on the slide so we can go home, and being children ourselves and hiding beneath the slide making icecream cones. Every time someone manages to drag a child out of a sandbox, there's a rift in the space-time continuum***.

So we 'went home'. By that I mean we rolled down the hill 4 times, then rolled down the hill 'for the last time' 4 more times, then Clementine played dead on the ground so I had to zombify her and make her walk home like she was my puppet, and then we had to call over Miranda's best friend Wren to visit Kaitie, and then we stuck dandylions and dead leaves through Kaitie's collar to make a crown for her, and then Clementine had to walk Kaitie, and then Miranda had to walk Kaitie, and then Wren had to walk Kaitie, and then Clementine lay down on the ground again because she couldn't walk Kaitie, and I decided she was being sleeping beauty and Kaitie had to wake her up with a big sloppy dog kiss, and then Clementine had to be carried across the street and then I had to go into their yard with them and spin them on their own plastic merry-go-round until Miranda and Clementine couldn't ignore their mother yelling at them from the kitchen to come inside, and I went home and Dad told me I was such a good person, and reminded me that he'd written down all the spelling mistakes from my earlier blog posts and pasted them to the front door for me.

So now I have to make this t-shirt...


*today I ate a fluff that looked like a chunk of chocolate off of the floor, and licked an unidentified white sauce off of my hand. It was hand lotion.

**I meow frequently, and the vet calls Kaitie the Pig Dog, due to that endearing little snuffling noise she makes all the time.

***Can you tell how little I know about physics here?