Little Humans

The title is a hail to my friend Jonny, who has a tendency to meet his friends with the words, "Greetings, humans!"

I recently began a new job as a preschool teacher, which I love.  After my second day I felt way too sore for someone who is only twenty-one, and on my fourth the combination of a heat wave and children too bouncy to keep indoors left me dizzy as a spinning top along with a low-grade fever and bad headache.  However, after a couple ibuprofen and a few frankly miraculous cups of tea yesterday morning, I felt better than I had most of the week.  Which was awesome because, as I said, I love this job.

Children are so very honest and usually easy to get a feel for.  They will keep surprising me because people are surprising, and that's actually what this post is about: children are little humans.  We all know this, and none of what I write here is any news to anyone.

But there is a little boy I worried over, because when other children slip on the play structure or start to fuss he laughs a harsh, untruthful laugh, and says he's trying to stop but that isn't true because he is forcing a fake laugh from himself.  It was nap time and he couldn't sleep, and he sucked his thumb while I rubbed his back.  I told him he could pick our story time book and he picked the one we've already read twice.  While I sat on the floor I watched all the children sleeping, and I thought about how each one will form into some person, and while they are all so small they don't know any of that. In elementary school they will start to know things, but right now they are so young and their lives have just started.  They have so very much to learn and to suffer, and I say that in full knowledge of my own young age.  They still have to see their parents struggle and struggle with their parents, and hide inside themselves and burst into trouble so someone will see them, and cry for loving those who love them not and cry because they are loved, and because they are loved but something isn't right. Or maybe it is right, and God is good.

Later that same little boy pushed another to hurry him down the blow-up water slide.  The smaller boy wasn't hurt, but was scared and could have gotten hurt.  The first boy didn't laugh this time.  He looked terrified, and said he just wanted to hurry him down the slide, not to hurt him.  I told him all was well, but that is why he had to be careful about other people.  He said okay, and apologized, and asked me to hold him around his towel because the water made him cold.  I am not so worried about him, now.