Bring Your Child To Work

Today is Bring Your Child To Work day at my office. I didn't think much of it, as both of our boys are with their father today. Besides, I love them too, too much to subject them to the mind-numbing pain and tedium that is government work. They're children, for godsake! They don't deserve this kind of abuse until they get their GED!

So one of my co-workers brings her child by my office. Let's call her Hair. So Hair walks in to my cube with her tween daughter in tow. She introduced us, and I stood up and shook Tween's hand, as Hair continued to tell her why I was a part of the work tour.

"This gentleman," says Hair, gently turning Tween's almost-adolescent frame so that it's pointed in my general direction, although Tween's head is still facing anywhere except in the direction of another human. "This gentleman helped me get out of a pile of work. I had so much work it was overwhelming. But then I talked with him, and he gave me a system that allowed me to get completely caught up. And I just can't thank him enough." At this time, Tween has rolled some sheets of paper into a tube, put them to her mouth, and has started blowing Hair's face, so that Hair's long, platinum hair is violently splashing to one side of Hair's head, as if she was in a monsoon. Hair continues to talk to me as she fishes strands of hair out of her eyes and puts up a useless hand to stop the onslaught of Tween's tornadic activities. "It's been a year and a half since we started here, and I'm ready for another vacation!" I nod to her, as it's difficult to pay attention to her words when her eyes are obfuscated by tendrils of stringy platinum smacking her in her nose and cheeks. "I think I have enough money saved up so that it can be affordable, but I just don't want to come back to a pile like I had before. It was just unbearable."
"It feels good to be in control," I said to her, the irony of my statements completely lost on Tween's wind-battered mother. Hair pushed Tween out of my office, and I yelled over her mother, "It was good to meet you, Tween." From down the hallway, I heard a matronly smack of hand on shoulder, and then in a voice that sounded like it was eminating from a paper tube, I heard, "It was good to meet you, too!"

Children are fucking stupid.