I was at the Laundromat this morning, and I noticed this kid hanging around watching people. He was about 6 years old with giant squirrel teeth and a crew cut. Standard cute kid.
As I’m putting stuff in the dryer, he comes over and hangs from the door of the dryer next to mine and stares at me. There was only an inch or so metal lip on the doors, and he hung there for a long time, so the kid had some freakish strength in his fingers, and that’s always something I admire in people.
Eventually he says something that I didn’t catch, so I say ‘huh?’, and he repeats it for the big dumb adult. ‘Eres pelon’, he says, which I’m pretty sure means ‘you’re bald’. I have a shaved head, so he’s right, but I’m not used to being mocked by buck-toothed kids I’ve never met, particularly in languages I don’t speak. I say ‘si, yo se’, because I only know 5 words of Spanish, and those are three of them. Then he asks, ‘porque?’, and I answer ‘como no’ because those are the other two. I’m starting to get a little irked, because the kid’s got a crew cut himself for Fred’s sake, and I want to tell him this, but I don’t how.
Then he says something I didn’t understand a word of, but I’m pretty sure meant, ‘I would like to piss in your ear, you filthy, hairless freak.’ So I took him out back and chucked him in a dumpster.