Baby, It's Cold Outside!

The day began quietly. I made Chocolate Chunk Coffee Cake, did computer work, and listened to the Beatles show on WOGL. I debated riding my bike to work, but while cold alone doesn't really bother me (26 was the high today), it was also very windy. I got a ride to work from Dad. Work was busy-to-steady and died quickly after about 3:30PM. As I told one customer later in the day, between the football games on and people hiding from the cold, the diminishing crowds weren't too surprising.

Dad picked me up from work as well and invited me to his and Uncle Ken's house for the second game of the day between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. I readily accepted. I'd wanted to see at least one one of the games today, especially since I had to miss last week's games, and I was starving. Dolores, Uncle Ken's girlfriend, made cheese steaks, and I had mini-cupcakes and small soft pretzels.

Football-crazy adults weren't the only people at the party. About mid-way through the quarter, I encountered two of the remaining kids, Dolores' grandchildren Mercades (8) and Blake (4). They said they were bored, so I directed them downstairs to a corner that wasn't blocking the TV and introduced them to the huge plastic container filled to the brim with Jessa's Beanie Babies collection. Bears, snakes, birds, lizards, a fish, rabbits, deer, and dogs and cats of every breed imaginable spilled out of the case. Mercades "oohed" and "ahhed" over the cute cats and especially the dogs; Blake loved the two snakes and the soccer-themed bear.

After they got bored with the Beanie Babies, we got Jessa's permission and went upstairs to play Wii. We played a few games on Mario Party 8, which I figured would be the easiest and fastest for them, since it was getting late at that point. Apparently, they did have their own Wii, and Mercades was a whiz at setting the game up (and not a bad player, either). I helped Blake figure the controller out. He got the hang of the Canyon race mini-game after a while and absolutely loved it.

The kids got hungry after our third or so game of Canyon Racers, so we put the Wii away and went to the kitchen. The kids got more cheese steaks. I joined Jodie, Dad's girlfriend, by a roaring fireplace in the den/office. Jodie and I talked about how wonderful the fireplace felt, especially as it's seldom used. (This biting cold is rare in southern New Jersey.)

Dad took me home ten minutes later. I was tired, and I didn't really feel like watching the rest of the game. (I later discovered the Giants won in overtime, darn it.) We had a chat in the car on the short ride to my apartment. He said he'd watched me with the kids and I had a real rapport with them; I understood them, and they understood me. I "live in their world," as he put it, and I ought to do something with elementary-age school children. I told him about wanting to be a children's librarian, and he said it was the perfect idea.

I've worked with young children for a long time, and not just because I'm the oldest of five kids (counting Jessa). I was having so many problems by fourth and fifth grade that my teachers in Cape May Elementary were at their wits' end as to what to do with me. I was bright and creative, but I was also shy, sensitive, eccentric, and the butt of every bully and prankster in the school. One day, I read The Lion and the Mouse out loud to my fifth-grade class. The kids and the teacher were so impressed, the teacher asked me to repeat my performance for the kindergardeners and first graders. That proved to be such a hit that I found myself spending more and more time as a kind of teacher's aid for the younger kids during lunch and in the afternoons. I liked the kids, and they liked me. I loved reading to them, doing craft projects with them, creating games and doing silly improvisational stories for them (all with the teacher's supervision, of course). It was one of the few things I missed when I was taken out of the regular school system all together the following year and placed in the Special Services District.