By Nick Perry
You may think childhood is a wonderfully innocent thing, but you’re wrong. This is unequivocal: it is fucking rough to be a kid. Before this afternoon I, too, believed childhood was just an extenuated period of not giving two shits about anything except your pet gerbils and losing teeth and stuff.
But after venturing to the Oberlin Public Library–which, by the by, absolutely passes my rigid standards for public libraries–for Dr. Seuss Day and seeing the kind of puerile sexual tension and social dramatics that govern these children’s lives, I was saddened by how much less exciting my life is than the average six year-old’s.
Rolling into the library in my fresh shades and Where The Wild Things Are T-shirt I gave the talent a light survey. Library programs are a hotspot for college girls that look sexy in glasses, do some mean finger paints, and charm the pants off parents. My kind of woman. An attractive girl that I sort of met once smiled at me from the front desk and I salaciously returned her gaze and swallowed an uncomfortable amount of spit and choked all over myself. Cool, I’m the balls, I thought, and walked into a clearing of the shelves packed with mesmerized toddlers ogling a few students twirling streamers.
The dudes in the crowd were practically all leaping out of their skins, clearly jealous. The chicks all sat grumpily, ashamed and frustrated that their boos didn’t have that kind of talent. As a person with no reputable talent, I sympathized heavily with the little guys.
These poor dudes are no doubt losing their girls to the fourth graders who got braces early and can kick the shit out of a kickball. I wished I could tell them that it would all work out, but parents usually don’t take kindly to strange men giving their six year-olds relationship advice. I couldn’t stand their plight, so I moved on to the mask-making station where I ran into a F+L friend, Sybil Levine. Due to a moderate terror of talking to attractive women I didn’t stay.
Instead I found my niche at a book-making table where tots went “fishing” for ideas in a waterless tub. Believing myself to be more creative than a six year-old I elected to trust my own inspirational flow rather than take one from a stupid notecard. No notecard could contain the sophistication of my brain! So I sat down and produced a cartoon masterpiece chronicling the intrepid and valiant adventures of Shrimp and Mollusk across the beach. You might object to this premise on the grounds that neither shrimp nor mollusks live on sand. Well, mine are magic.
As I worked tirelessly on my epic, I had a sporadic, mildly flirty exchange with one of the students working at the table. After completing two pages I was fairly certain she was going to think I was cute as shit. But then, as I preoccupied myself with the next page this little fella starts chatting with the other table attendant, also an Oberlin student. He starts telling her all about this time he met a bear and had to protect his family and shit, and I look up at him like, “Yo bro, you didn’t fight a goddamn bear, don’t feed this chick lies,” but she just eats that bull right up and starts smiling and twisting her hair around her finger and I look down to catch myself picking my nose and drooling. Motherfucker had so much game I just couldn’t stick around anymore. Who cares about the author of a brilliant nautical epic if the guy next to him beat up a bear? So I got up to leave with my buddy but noticed a little girl going to work on her mushroom-cutted bean bag toss opponent.
She was pulling every trick in the book but this bro just had no idea what was going on. Even though the dude was shooting like a total amateur, hitting like less than 30% of his shots, he was dominating her, just like the girl planned. She was just letting this dude walk all over in the game and pretending to trip over her untied shoe when she shot. I wanted to be like, “Bro, she just wants you to grab her arm when she trips, this is the easiest shot in the game.” But he stayed ignorant to her advances and proceeded to beat the hell out of her on the board. The poor girl looked heartbroken and she walked off to get her problems face painted away.
I say again, it fucking sucks to be a kid. The players were out in full force at the public library today and hearts were being torn out all over the place. I left with a reassessment of childhood and nagging feeling of envy towards that bear kid. So, if you know an elementary schooler, check up on him, it’s entirely possible that he knows a conniving Don Juan or has an ex that is bringing him down. And don’t forget that girls love a man who fights bears.
