It was mid-semester break at the local university where I worked so I took Ming in with me. He was nearly four. I’d only done this once before and it’d been a disaster because there was nothing for him to do except run up and down the hallway, vrooming, which wasn’t really appropriate at exam time.
This time I had a drawer full of paper, textas, finger puppets, matchbox cars and chocolate frogs ready, and for awhile this worked really well. I closed my office door and started preparing for the following semester while Ming played and drew pictures happily on the floor.
Inevitably, Ming got bored, so finally I opened my office door and told him he could go up and down the hallway quietly. He raced out.
After a few minutes I realised it was just a bit too quiet and, worried he’d wandered outside, I darted into the hallway just in time to see him dragging a chair from one of empty lecture rooms into the hallway and across to another lecture room. This was a big job for a little guy and I retreated to my doorway and watched, unnoticed, while, grunting with exertion, he finally propped the chair up against the closed door.
I knew there was some sort of community seminar going on in that room and earlier I’d bumped into the woman conducting it and said a quick hello. She’d seen Ming and crouched down at his eye-level and ruffled his hair, saying, “You’re a handsome devil aren’t you!” But it wasn’t until I saw him clambering onto the chair to look through the small window into the room where she was giving some sort of presentation that I realised how much impact she’d had on him.
I tip-toed up behind him to watch this woman through Ming’s ‘little-boy’ eyes. She was certainly beautiful; she was young, slim, olive-skinned and her black hair fell to her waist. Ming was so transfixed that he had no idea I was there until she suddenly noticed us peering in. She was so startled that I whisked Ming off the chair and back into my office, embarrassed.
But, much to my surprise, he ran straight back and picked up the chair, which had fallen over, and clambered onto it again to have another look. I quietly left him to it.
A few minutes later, I heard voices in the hallway, indicating that the seminar had finished. Ming toddled back into my office, an ecstatic smile on his face.
“Come an’ look, Mummy,” he said, pulling me away from my desk and into the hallway. The woman was walking away but, for some reason, she turned back and saw us watching her. She waved, and Ming waved back. Then she was gone. He sighed.
“That’s a bootiful womin, isint it, Mummy,” he said, looking up at me, his eyes full of light. I was flabbergasted. Was he in love?
It took weeks to wear off!
…..
Now that Ming is 18 he has experienced a few more crushes and been crushed by them as we all are at that age. It is strange to think that I was, at his age, falling in love with Anthony. I wonder who Ming will end up forming a relationship with and I hope she will be kind to him like the woman in the story above. If she isn’t, I will bop her!
jmgoyder 