In the children's room

10:45--
Where's my duct tape? Where's my shotgun?

There is a 3- to 4-year-old boy in here--20 yards away from me, directly behind my terminal--that desperately needs the be tied down and instructed to SHUT THE F-CK UP.

He's emptied all the Berenstain Bears books off the shelves onto the floor, shouting (no, I do not jest) out the plots or at least the titles of each. Oh, wait, now he's running in circles around the tables. Twenty seconds....thirty seconds....oops, over to the media...into the story room... (running!).

I shoo him out of the story room. His dad mutters that we should close the door if we don't want the kids in there. I shut it. Big sign on it to stay [the f-ck] out. We don't normally close it because the heat doesn't work and it gets absolutely frigid in there with the door shut.

But now the kid (maybe I should just go ahead and call him Blond Chuckie [not the Rugrats Chuckie, the scary marionette Chuckie]) is shouting across the room to his family, "HEY GUYS, OVER HERE!!!"

Dad has shoved all the books back onto shelves--why do I suspect that I will need to go clean up this area at some point?

OK, now Dad has discovered his "shusher" mostly to no effect. Some men are just hopeless parents.

Y'know what else? Chuckie needs his pants changed. He stinks.

Uh-oh, now he's outta my line of vision. What catastrophe is he going to cause now...? Especially now that about 10 other kids just showed up. Oh, wait...they seem to be well-behaved kids, ones who know how to be quiet. More importantly, their adults seem to be keeping a lid on them. [I should have known: it's a Boy Scout troop on a field trip. I am extra-super-nice to all of them, since Chuckie and dad are camped out right by the desk.]

Yep, as I figured: with his dad's "help" Chuckie has broken one of the game PCs. Sigh. Time for me to move to another desk; he's back to the Berenstain Bears books, shouting. I leave, after repairing the damaged PC they left in their wake.

I like kids; I really do. This one I'd especially like boiled, with small potatoes around him. And an apple in his mouth.

--10:58