In just a few hours I'll start my ninth day as a children's monitor in the Boudewijn building in Brussels. Each new day I am flooded with nerves. Nervous about how I'm going to cope with this heatwave that's been badgering us for so lang, nervous about how the hell I'm going to try to get those ten to fourteen year olds exited about something other than their -currently- very narrow mindedness. Each day is a battle between bending yourself over in a million ways to please them and the dormant -yet very anxious- need to strangle the life out of the insubordinates. Of course, the latter is something Child Services would very much indeed frown upon. But in this private and unprejudiced environment I think I can safely say that there are a few children -as wellas several of their parents- who would fare well with a good ol' fashioned beating.
Take the case of young David and Maya for example. David is a ten-year old boy with ADD. Outside of the holidays he must be quite the delight when he's high on Ritalin, but -as per his mother's wish- he is currently under no medication. So we have the pleasure of enjoying the extremely undermedicated David in all his glory. He is unable to pronounce syllabils which means that all children's monitors should forcefully become fluent in Davids.
"I an to ay" roughly translates to "I want to play", although frankly, 99% of the time it's just guesswork.
The poor boy is also -supposedly- unable to wipe his own ass, even though he has no problems signing the procedure to you! And to make matters worse, his rear end is plagued by a dreaded case of eczema. Real winners in this family, wouldn't you say? No mystery as to where poor David picked up this kind of malchance in his life! The mother's a sight to see as well. The term 'white trash' almost seems too kind.
And then there's little Maya, or as I like to call her, Damien 'The Omen' Thorne's follow-up. A girl with more faces than a full-bred hydra. Meet cute Maya in front of Daddy-o! Meet vixen Maya when she doesn't get what she wants! And animalistic, loves-to-scratsh-and-mutilate Maya when she's just plain bored. A girl so vindictive, cunning and serpent-like, she puts He Who Shall Not Be Named to shame. Guess I picked the wrong age category of children to monitor?
Oh well, next week it'll be the six to niners who'll have me running for the fire escape or the edge of a very tall building.
Still, in order to still want children after going through this ordeal, you have to tell the white lie all young parents say to themselves when smacked in the face with cold hard evidence that children really are evil, little monsters: "Our children will never be like that!"
Ah, the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day...
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