fandomhigh | Childcare For Idiots, Thursday

Childcare For Idiots, Thursday - 5/19

"Now first we're gonna clear up a few things," Deadpool informed the class when they arrived. "Today is Thursday, not Saturday. As yesterday was Wednesday, not Friday. And if anyone uses autotune in my presence, I will have to murder you. Got it? Good!"

Ah, the start of a new day with Deadpool.

"Today we're gonna discuss how you need to supervise a kid at all times because sharp things always seem way nicer to run with and or put in your mouth when you're a three year old," he informed the class cheerfully. "Little known fact: grenades and a Dora the Explorer DVD gone missing equal the same amount of destructive force in a house. The more you know and all that crap."

Unfortunately, Jan wasn't listening to a damn thing concerning the lecture. She was, however, singing. Loudly. "Fri~day, Fri~day!"

Because it was an awesome song when you still thought My Little Pony was an amazing cinematic achievement. Without being stoned.

Deadpool ignored the singing, steaming on through that lecture. "Break off into groups of two and figure out what you have just laying around that's bad for kids. YouTube counts."

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"Anything with sugar in it," Karla said with full authority. "Believe me, last time I had seven and they didn't need any help in becoming tiny shrieking whirlwinds of destruction."

Possibly because they were all related to her, but details.

Hi, Jim! Guess what! You had a partner!

Oh, hey! A partner! Jim would smile at her, but first he had to take a moment to look thoroughly baffled.

"... Last time?"

She ended up with small children frequently? What did she do with them? Eat them?

Somebody really needed a thorough explanation as to the island and its whims, perhaps.

Awww, a newbie! Karla kind of wanted to lean over and pinch his shiny new cheeks.

"Last time," she agreed. "I take it your Elder Sib didn't explain about the advent of little kids yet?"

Jim's shoulders hitched up a little, in response to that.

"Um, George was kind of..."

How to describe George?

"She explained what planes are. And television. And mentioned something about waking up the wrong gender? But mostly... No?"

George had been George. How else could he put it, really?

Fortunately, Karla knew George, at least a little. She could guess.

"Oh, you didn't know what teevees were, either?" Karla grinned at him. "My world is very different from this one. I'm Karla, by the way. Kiss kiss."

Okay. Maybe her grin turned just a sliiiightest bit wicked as she waited to see how he'd respond to her greeting. Maybe.

Mostly, he responded to that greeting with a bit of a one-eyed squint and a slightly wrinkled nose that said that he had no idea how to take a greeting like that one.

"Uh... Hey." Maybe it was just a weird not-from-here greeting that he hadn't heard yet. "I'm Jim? My planet is pretty different from this one, too. No televisions, but that's fine. Our children's storybooks are way more advanced than that."

No flailing, no falling backwards out of his chair, no attempt to take her up on the 'offer.' Jim had just risen a notch or two in her estimation.

"Our level of technology is much lower," Karla explained. "My people use Craft--magic?--instead. So, also no teevees or airplanes, or anything like that."

Rather than get into the awesome that was Kaeleer--and it was, dammit--Karla went back to the initial topic at hand.

"George wasn't lying about sometimes waking up a different gender." From her slight grimace, Jim could probably guess her opinions on that bit of Fandom whimsy. "Other times, you might wake up a different age--you just barely missed the weekend where we all woke up as little kids. And the resultant belly-aches on Monday. And sometimes the island sees fit to send you children from a bunch of possible futures. So you wake up normal and everything seems fine until a tiny fist starts banging on your door demanding to know where her daddy--or her other Mommy, or Darkness knows what else--is and that she's hungry."

Jim was generally pretty mellow. Until he decided he'd rather be a complete shit-disturber. Flailing or falling out of his chair would totally hurt the 'cool teen' image that he tried to keep going strong.

"... You know, I don't know if I should think that's more or less weird than all the little things that are just different in the day-by-day." He kept his nose wrinkled for a moment more, and then he shrugged and shook his head. Whatever, right? "I guess it's a good thing that I'm taking this class. I mean, I'm not bad with kids, at least the few that I get to see back home, but having to take care of one for a while that wants to call me Dad..."

Too weird.

"At least I know not to let them play with sharp things without supervision, and stuff like that."

And now the conversation had drifted back to the discussion topic!

"It's very disconcerting, no matter how much you like kids," Karla assured him. "Like I said, I had seven last time and two the time before that, and it's still weird to realize the curly-haired moppet calling for her Mommy is talking about you."

And breaking up fights about whose Mommy was better--even when they were both talking about you--was downright surreal.

"So, yeah. Nothing pointy, limited access to sugar, nothing breakable or expensive..."

"Anything that they can fall off of is probably right out, too. A scooter that's set to keep a kid pretty close to the ground would be okay, but anything that gets any real amount of lift? No way."

Plus, he didn't want grubby little kid fingers all over his solar surfer.

"Of course, it all depends on the age of the kid in question, too," Karla pointed out. "I mean, you can let an eight year old play with something that would be completely inappropriate for a four year old."

"True. And what's age appropriate can be completely different from place to place, and from species to species."

Totally a valid concern, where Jim was from.

"True," Karla said with a nod. "I mean, I know Eyrien children are given weapons almost as soon as they master flying. So, it varies even culture to culture."

Jim gave a little nod at that. It didn't matter that he'd never heard of the Eyriens before. There were plenty of races sailing the Etherium that he'd never heard of, after all. It wasn't exactly a small universe.

"I guess if that's going to be a factor, it kind of turns into a discussion about what's appropriate for people that are still thought of as children. But then again, if that was a really important factor, then some people would never get to do anything."

Oh, hey. Jim's issues with authority were starting to peek out around the corners.

Karla was just going to hide a grin. "Oh?" she asked. "You wouldn't happen to know anyone who had to deal with something like that, would you?"

"Well, nobody really comes to mind," Jim said, with one of those little, dismissive shrugs that just screamed that he was totally talking about himself, here, why do you ask? "But, you know... grown-ups figure they know what's best, before they even bother to know what the kids they're bossing around are capable of..."

"And of course, anything that kid does to show them just gets them in more trouble," Karla said with all due sympathy.

Aww. She couldn't ruffle his hair, right? That would be wrong?

See, Karla? You were totally speaking Jim's language. Just refrain from that hair-ruffle for as long as possible, and he might decide he likes you before you scare him by getting all big-sisterly or whatever.

"Yeah. Trouble with the cops, trouble with the family, threats about juvenile hall and being called a loser and a bad egg, and..." My, that was awfully specific. He frowned, coughed, and then shrugged again.

You know. Totally dismissive.

"If they're not hurting anything, I don't see what the problem is."

Edited 2011-05-20 00:29 (UTC)

And maybe her cookies were seen as cuisine on Jim's planet!

"They don't trust you to be able to handle it," Karla said, thinking back to a certain spanking she'd gotten from a certain head groom when she was very young. "They see you doing something that scares them and they figure you're too young, too immature, too stupid to do it properly."

Of course, in Karla's case, they'd been right. Just because she'd brought the horse back without injury to either of them had had very little to do with her control of the situation.

Hey, her cookies couldn't be any worse than some of the stuff that Jim's mother served at the Benbow. Mmm, food that wriggles.

"And you're not stupid. You're far from it. But it's just... what else is there to do? Settle for the bottom of the heap? If all you have in the world is what you can prove you're worth, then shouldn't you be able to get up and scream, 'I'm still here?' without people getting angry about it? Being young doesn't have anything to do with it!"

Okay, so maybe flying his surfer in restricted areas wasn't quite the same thing.

But it certainly made him feel alive whenever he did. He couldn't say that about the rest of Montressor.

Karla regarded him with a long look, thinking a bit about the conversation she had with Luke the day before.

"If you're looking for the cynical answer--and I don't have much else to offer right now--it's because most people like to live with their head down," she said quietly. "Without jumping up and demanding attention or even fighting for what it is that they want. Sometimes it's just easier to sit back and accept what you have instead of striving for what you can get. And most people who sit back and just accept don't like seeing someone else jump up. It destroys the illusion that there's no sense in trying."

"Well, too bad for them, then," Jim mumbled, frowning and tearing the corner from the top of a piece of paper in his notebook, rolling it around between his fingers into a little ball. "What else is living for, if you're not going to experience it?"

It seemed like one hell of a waste, to him.

Karla shrugged. "Let me know if you figure it out," she said.

Of the many, many words that could be used to describe her life, 'boring' wasn't one of them.

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Childcare For Idiots, Thursday - 5/19

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