Chance Encounters

Emmie turned me onto this interview with Kazuo Ishiguro yesterday, which proved to be wonderful lunch hour reading. In it, I ran across the following tidbit:

In many ways, children grow up in a bubble. We try to maintain that bubble—quite properly, I think. We shield them from unpleasant news. We do this so thoroughly that if you walk around with a small child, strangers you meet enter into the conspiracy.

... which reminded me of an exchange I had with some people at the Costo the other day, right before lunch. I was cruising down the dairy aisle, trying to find a wholesale-sized log of cream cheese (I was about to make a couple of cheesecakes for Emmie's birthday). In that same aisle was a man with two little kids in his cart, and I heard him say to them, as part of a longer narrative I did not catch, that I ("that woman over there") wanted to "eat them."

I didn't respond, but I was amused. My own kid (who, shockingly enough, no longer rides in my grocery cart), lived a rich fantasy life when she was little, and constantly demanded/provided a narrative to her days.

...but back to the present, at the Costco... the older kid, a little girl who was maybe 4-ish, was arguing with her father, not believing him. She turned and (yay for bold kids!) asked me, "do you want to eat children?" And I answered, even as her father was steering his cart away, "well, I am pretty hungry!"

I could hear that the conversation was continuing as we parted ways.