Prompt #17

I was just on time for work.  I hate that. I always like to arrive a bit early, that way I’m never caught off guard.  There was plenty to do, so I busied myself getting things ready to open, then I unlocked the door and put out our “open” flag.

I walked back to the counter, followed by everyone who had been waiting to be let in.  Quickly the quiet little shop transformed into a mad house.  Mothers yelling at their kids, babies crying, questions about what we sell, and the phone incessantly ringing.  

Nerves frazzled, I wasn’t a bucket-load of patience.  So when a little boy crept behind the counter and began to play with toys that we hadn’t gone through yet, it took everything I had to be kind.

“You better not play with these," I said,  "we haven’t put tags on them yet!”  

He ignored me, maybe sensing that my smile was fake, and kept playing.  A few minutes later his mother caught sight of him and ordered him out from behind the counter.  She apologized and they moved on to another part of the store.  

I was busy with another phone call when I caught sight of black ropes stretched across the store.  As soon as I could, I investigated and saw that same little boy.  

He had taken some toy out of its bag and had stretched its ropes all around the store, leaving a tangled mess behind him.  When I caught up with him, I asked him more firmly this time, if I could have the toy.  I didn’t leave him much chance to ignore me, since my hands closed over the rope and took it from his grasp.  He shot me an angry look and disappeared.  I wound the ropes back up, still puzzled as to what exactly I was untangling.  

And where was its bag?  I began looking in the toy section.  The numerous kids in the store had wreaked havoc in the toy area.  The once-organized shelves were bare, with their contents now scattered across the floor.  I decided that trying to reorganize would be useless at the moment since the kids were still playing, and I went back behind the counter.  By this time a woman was waiting to be checked out anyways.

After about ten minutes, everyone had either crossed the hall into our lady’s department, or had checked out and left.  This gave me the opportunity to go back to the toy section and look for that bag.  Unsure of what I was looking for, I decided to clean everything and maybe find it along the way.  After a few minutes of tidying in the quiet store, that same little boy came back.  I almost groaned, thinking all of my cleaning would be wasted in a matter of minutes.  

To my surprise, he took a single transformer off its shelf and sat down quietly with it.

“Do you have instructions for this?” he asked.

I was surprised by his small voice, it was almost cute.  But I knew the kind of kid he was.  He was spoiled, and used to getting his way.  He’s the kind that always throws a tantrum when his mother says it’s time to go.  “We don’t have the instructions,” I said tiredly.

“I don't know how to do this.  Do you have the instructions?”

I would guess him to be about five, maybe six.  Right in the middle of the stage of repeating one’s self in hopes of getting a different answer.

I told him again that we didn’t, and kept cleaning around him.  

He was disappointed, and kept mumbling about how he couldn’t figure it out.  He kept talking but he was mostly too quiet to hear, until he said something that caught my ear.

“Mommy and Daddy don’t fight much anymore.  ‘Cause they moved to different houses.”

I turned around to face him, but he wasn’t looking at me, maybe he wasn’t even talking to me.  My judging eyes filled with sadness for this little boy and all the angry things that he had already seen and heard in his short life.  

Why did I end up so lucky?  My parents rarely fought, they didn’t get divorced, and they didn’t toss me around in the middle of their own problems.  I found the black bag that matched the ropes, and put the jumbled up mass back in its bag.  I tightened the synch and put it up on a very high shelf.  

I finished tidying around the little boy, who was still trying to figure out the transformer.  I wanted to reach out to him, to help him figure out the toy, or tell him that everything would be okay.  Before I could, his mother materialized from the other room and told him it was time to go.  They left the store without a tantrum.  I walked over to his little transformer and put it back on its shelf, alone.