I was sitting on the information desk this afternoon when I felt something bumping my elbow. Turning around I saw a little girl, maybe 4 years old, nudging me & fidgetting around.
“I need to go to the toilet”, she said.
“Where is your mummy or daddy?”
“I don’t have a daddy.”
“Where is your mummy?”
“Bill [name changed] is mummy’s friend and is going to be my daddy in 4 days.”
“Who came to the library with you today?”
Just then her mum notices us and looks after the toilet request.
10 minutes later I hear screaming and a whole bunch of activity from the computers where the teenage boys are playing runescape. Over I went to check things out and the same little girl is running around and jumping all over the boys.
“How about you stop running around and go see your mummy?”, I suggest.
Another 5 minutes later. More running around near the boys. “What’s up?”. One of the boys tells me, “That little girl. She’s psycho. She bit me!”. Meanwhile, she is sprinting around the fiction section and I can’t see her mum anywhere. I go over and ask, “do you know where your mummy went?”. She looked at me and said, “Baby wants to get out of the car”, and runs out the front door of the library and straight toward the busy main road in front of the library.
I sprint out after her and catch up with her when she stops by (presumably) her mum’s car. “Baby wants to get out of the car”. Luckily, baby is a doll. Again I suggest, “How about we go find mummy”. She came back in and went to see mummy in the picture books, before charging off to the back of the library.
A few more minutes later, one of the boys is back, “That girl, she’s hitting us with CDs and stuff”. This time, her mum arrives, and they borrow some books & leave.
Another day in the library.
15 years in retail have taught me that:
- kids with the worst names are the worst behaved – especially if they are clad in outfits meant to co-ordinate with mummy’s bling/labels
- s*****r school kids can be undisciplined monsters – esp if mummy is a drab ineffectual waste of space
Nothing like a responsible parent… Way to lead by example!
It was an odd sequence of events, but surprisingly I didn’t feel all that frustrated by it. More amazed. Plenty of people complain about the runescape boys all the time, so this gave them a chance to be on the other side.
The girl was sweet enough, just really really excitable. I asked her name, but couldn’t make out the response. I also had a person congratulate me for running after her as she headed for the street.