|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:43 pm
Occasionally, Evan Stetson's job involved meetings, and for his new, somewhat questionably-obtained son, David, this meant doing time at the Child Center. Evan didn't know anyone to hire as a babysitter, and the local daycare wasn't far from the newspaper office, so David's father had seized advantage of coincidence and left his son in the capable hands of childcare professionals.
The first visit, David had absolutely refused to be taken from Evan, but as time went on, he began to realize that a) Evan was definitely coming back after, and b) the Child Center was an interesting place to spend an afternoon after all. Whereas Evan tended to be quiet and observant, David was chatty and sociable. Despite Evan's witty conversations, he was only one person, and at the Child Center, there were plenty of children his age to be chatty and sociable at.
Today though, there were only a few kids in the daycare room. It was Sunday evening, and most parents were already at home, but the newspaper stopped for no man. David found himself sitting rather glumly at an empty arts and crafts table, poking his fingers in the paint, smearing them across the plastic tabletop, and wishing Evan's meeting was over already.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:50 pm
Rina absolutely loved afternoons at the childhood center. This was in sharp contrast from how Sandra Clairboro felt about leaving her there - no matter how meticulous an outfit she dressed her (not-)spawn in that morning, Rina came home wearing clothes that weren't hers, right down to her underwear. But it was necessary - she had work, and meetings, and a burgeoning career as Gaia's fifth-most-prominent newscaster. So Rina got dumped.
Not that Rina minded. Upon being dropped into the play area, she hurried over to the painting station where she found a boy in the throes of making a mess. Rina reached forward and dragged a finger through the paint, making a squiggle in it. She liked his shirt.
She wiped her finger on her leggings and began fumbling with the buttons on her collar. "Wanna trade?" she asked forwardly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:10 pm
With the prospect of company, David perked up considerably, however, he was nonplussed by what she meant to trade. Fortunately for him, things became slightly clearer when she began to take off her shirt. He considered the offer, and then agreed.
"Reckon that's fine with me,"
Not to be outdone, he shed his jacket and began to unbutton as well. He was still at the age where people coming up to him and disrobing could be business as usual, or at least nothing to get too fussed about. Anyway, every kid knew that trading was fun, and no pastime was more worthwhile than trying to convince other children to give them something new and exciting in exchange for some old trinket that they'd gotten bored of already. David liked all of his shirts, but getting a new shirt was better than wearing one that he was already used to. The fact that it was a girl's shirt didn't mean anything, David's fashion sense was already so outlandish that a girl's shirt was one of the more normal things he'd ever end up wearing anyway.
Undoing the last button, David shouldered his shirt off and handed it over. "I'm keepin' the tie, though," he insisted, setting today's awful stripey tie on the table and inadvertently getting fingerpaint on it in the process. "Fair enough?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:18 pm
Rina handed over her shirt - a striped yellow and orange rugby polo - and accepted the boy's button-up with a grin. "S'alright," she nodded, slipping it on over her shoulders and buttoning it nimbly. "I've got a scarf--"
She trailed off, as if just now realizing she was not in fact wearing her scarf, and grasped frantically at her collarbone for a moment before remembering. She relaxed. "It's in my backpack. In my cubby," she said, and pointed. A long, red scarf emerged snakelike from a pink backpack hanging on a hook.
She looked down at herself, surveying the way the newly acquired brown paisley clashed with her hot pink pedal-pushers. The raucous mix of color satisfied her. She looked at the boy, now dressed in her summery yellow and orange, and flashed him a thumbs up. "Lookin' good," she said, flashing a smile that was missing its front teeth.
She stuck out a paint-covered hand to shake. "I'm Rina."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:40 pm
David stuck out an answering hand in a pleasant shade of green. "David. Stetson. Like the hat n' all." He picked his own floppy top hat up off the floor, where it had fallen when he had squirmed into Rina's polo shirt. Dusting it off and getting more streaks of paint on the brim in the process, he said "'S a nice scarf," he admired approvingly. "Dad says that I gotta wait till winter to get one for me." He tied his tie back on with a tangled knot and admired his mostly-inaccurate handiwork for a moment. Later on it would take Evan at least ten minutes and scissors to get it off, but right now Daniel was thinking that it looked pretty much just like when his dad did them.
Formalities completed, David leaned back in his baby blue plastic chair and reached for more paint, covering the rest of his handshake hand with it thoughtfully before looking at Rina and asking "Can you paint my face? I can do you, I seen em do it at a fair once."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 6:37 am
"Pffff," said Rina disapprovingly. She didn't like playing by the rules of fashion, and would mix stripes and florals any day of the week. "I wear my scarf whenever I want."
She ran another finger through the paint on the table, inspected the resulting gob, and nodded. "Yeah, I can! Hold still!" She leaned forward and ran her finger down his nose, leaving a stripe of green warpaint. Then she gave him sloppy dots above his eyebrows (getting some paint in his hair), and lines under his eyes.
She stood back and admired her work. It was good, but it wasn't good enough. "Have you got any more colors?" she asked. What this really needed to be awesome was some electric purple, maybe some blue.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:04 am
"Well, that's what I tole 'im I'd do, but he wasn't havin' none of it," David admitted somewhat regretfully. "He is an 'orrible dad to have in times of need." Or at least in times of need for scarves, apparently.
As his face got painted, David squirmed in a futile attempt to see Rina's handiwork without the help of a mirror. "Izzit good? Do I look intimidatin' an' manly?"
It was going to take a lot more than face paint to make David look intimidating and manly.
When she asked about the colours, he frowned and looked at the crafts table, which was unhelpfully free of any colours besides red, blue, yellow, green, and white. "We got those. This place don't have much of a selection."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:37 am
"We should lodge a complain' with man-a-gent," replied Rina solemnly as she cracked the top off the tube of red paint. She squeezed out a blobby line of vermilion onto the plastic, and dabbed a finger in it. This was used to give David a pair of angry red eyebrow markings.
"You look real intimidatin'," she informed him, drawing on a red mustache and some whiskers for good measure. "I just 'bout scared myself."
She wiped a streak of red paint on her tights and folded her arms across her chest. "Now you gotta paint me, yeah?" she asked. "I wanna be intimidatin', too!"
But maybe not manly. She was a little too girly for that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:50 am
David agreed and added, "After we look intimidatin' enough we should tell em our relevant complaints. They are stifilin' our creative instink." It was a term he had learned from Evan once when he was complaining about the editor at his paper. David had clung onto it for just such an occasion, and the fact that he had a chance to use it, get a new shirt, and get his face painted meant that this daycare trip had unexpectedly turned into one of the better ones.
He preened a little at her compliment and said "It's my face. It is naturally built for intimidatin' face paint." Grabbing the paint for Rina's turn now, he squinted for a moment in concentration and then started with white fangs around her mouth. "D'you wanna look like a bear, a tiger, or an angry parent?" he asked thoughtfully. "At this point I feel like it could go either way."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 9:11 am
Rina thought about it, carefully weighing the pros and cons of each option and scrunching up her nose in thought. "I think..." she said, prolonging her decision. Tiger, bear, or angry parent? Well... really, it was a no brainer.
"Angry parent!" she exclaimed. "So when Mom comes an' gets me, I can tell'er I got painted to look like her." She grinned at David, admiring the good job she'd done on his warrior paint, and shut her eyes anticipating more paint.
"Make me scary," she said happily.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 10:29 am
"You got it," David said gleefully, reaching for blue paint to make her cheeks look like she was holding her breath. "I jus' hope we got enough red here to pull it off, like."
Finished with her cheeks, he began to smear red paint on her face, and added some blue around the eyes like makeup, since her parent was a lady, and grown up female-types tended to wear stuff like that. He prided himself on remembering that detail, and he hummed cheerfully as he worked. "Not gonna lie, we're prolly gonna scare em into buying tons more paint."
He finished up with a flourish, and, anxious to see his own face, he added, "Hold on, I wanna take a lookit myself in case they make us take a wash." He ran off towards the bathroom and stood on tiptoe to look in the mirror, letting out a little "Worrrrrr, nice!" before hurrying back. "Okay, now we're ready for complainin'."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 10:52 am
"Hold on, I wanna see," objected Rina, and raced to the bathroom behind him. She admired herself, fighting the urge to touch her face. "I look great!" she told him as she skipped back. She grabbed him by the arm and dragging him across the room.
"Let's tell 'em all the colors we want!" she exclaimed as she tugged. "I want a 'lectric purple, an' some bright, bright yellow, like my shirt!"
Well, his shirt now. She pointed to show what color she meant, and then pointed to her leggings. "An' hot pink!" she finished.
"What colors do you want?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 11:04 am
David stuck his tongue out in serious thought before deciding, "All the colours in my crayon box at home." This seemed to cover all of the colours that he couldn't be fully creative without, although he couldn't name them all at once. "'Specially neon laser green."
Now that they were closer to the moment of truth, what they were doing was beginning to get more serious to David. Normally he avoided conflict, especially when it meant people getting angry in his general direction, and although they usually got angry in his general direction anyway, he never really tried to challenge the Man directly. However, he was not about to look like a sissy in front of Rina, and peer pressure worked its magic much more easily when he felt really intimidating, what with his vicious face paint. He strode, if not ahead, then at least not too far behind Rina, and when they reached the nearest daycare employee, he said "Oi."
"My friend and I here would like to discuss th' nature of the paint on the craft table, specifically, we'd like some more."
Evan had always said to hurl words before stones, and thus David attempted to start the negotiations peacefully.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:39 am
"Well," said Rina to her co-conspirator, as dryly as a four-year-old could speak. "That went well." In front of her crouched a very disgruntled daycare worker who was intently scrubbing paint from her face. (She had, however, looked spot on for "Angry Parent.")
It had not gone well. Their request had not been met fairly, or at all. Instead, the junior revolutionaries had found themselves spirited away to the bathroom where they were introduced to unhealthy doses of warm water and soap.
Later, released back into the play area but not to the paints, the little girl disdainfully knocked over a tower of alphabet blocks and looked at her new friend. "They didn't ne-goat-she-ate," she declared sourly.
"They're the man," she continued. "They're try'na keep us down."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Aug 07, 2010 8:47 pm
David didn't look too upset. For a situation that had imploded as badly as theirs had, the only backlash he was really concerned about was the backlash from his old dad. He didn't like confrontation, sure, but once it was over and done with, as long as he got out of it in one piece, he wasn't much for looking back. The past was tricksy business, and he wouldn't have any of it. "Yeah," he said. "I don't reckon it went that well, but I figure that Man-fightin's gotta be tough. Else we'd all be doin' it, right?"
He scratched his chin thoughtfully, and said, "I think th' negoat-she-atin' did so bad cos we didn't got any force behind us," he rationalized. "I mean, th' Man ain't gonna wanna bargain if they ain't got anythin' to lose. We just gotta be more fierce or summat."
At that moment though, someone entered the play area, tapping one impatient foot. Evan Stetson stared down at his captured rebel and announced, "You, young man, have some serious explaining to do." David looked up and offered his attempt at a casually cheeky grin. "Me? Cor, you sure?"
"Positive." said Evan. David waved goodbye to Rina somewhat reluctantly as he went to collect his rucksack and go. As Evan dragged him out, a faint "And what happened to your shirt?" could be heard in the distance.
For one rebel leader, it was going to be a very long evening.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
