Sunday, June 9, 2013

Quietly and in a nice voice

Boy, yesterday was quite a day.  Much too hot, which sort of drew a veil over everything, you know what I mean.  I still ended up enjoying myself, but it was iffy for awhile there.

But I am not going to tell you the whole saga of the day, because that will be boring and uncomfortable.  Instead I will tell you one brief story which happened right after class.

I was hurrying through Albertsons, looking to grab a pint of whipping cream and get the hell out.  I was headed to Dina's for dinner that night, and was making a banana cream pie.  As soon as I came in through the automatic doors, I heard the noise.  Like a distant piece of machinery or a freeway, or something.  But as I went down the aisle, it became clear.  It was a very familiar sound in grocery stores -- a child, about two, crying loudly and with forethought.  This one was a girl, who was making herself cry, and at great volume.  She wasn't hurling herself about in the grocery cart seat, or grabbing at things, or any other destructive behavior, but she was shrieking and crying at length and LOUDLY.

When I came into view of her, I saw that her parents, who were both there, were quite young, maybe 22 or 23, and were talking quietly to one another and entirely ignoring their steam-whistle daughter.  They were also ignoring the dirty looks they were getting from older patrons, who, I'm certain, were thinking that these young folks nowadays were just so used to this behavior that they couldn't even hear their poor little baby girl, who was just crying her eyes out, besides upsetting all the decent, responsible customers who had raised their children right.  None of this yelling carry-on.

As I was rounding the corner away from them, the little girl began to speak, all at the top of her lungs, and through her sobs.

"I wanna say I'm sorry!" she howled, at top volume.  "I wanna say I'm sorry -- I WANNA say I'm SORRY!  I wanna say I'm SORRY...!"

Her mother leaned in towards her scarlet face.

"Yes, sweetie, but there's a rule about saying sorry, isn't there?" she said quietly.  "Do you know what it is?"

I was down the next aisle by now and couldn't see her any longer, but the volume was turned up to eleven, so I didn't miss a note.

"Qui-Et-Ly!"  the small girl bellowed.  "And in a nice voice!"

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