Have you ever bullied small children? No, I don’t mean not on purpose or in passing. I mean a full-fledged mockery of a small person. I mean the systematic insult to the little childish dignity in its best feelings. Not? But I hate it. I constantly offend the one-year-old personality. I sneer at the little man!
Recently, for example. We were camping with friends, the car was nearby. So I, the bastard, did not let him lick the wheel of the car. That’s not all! What a blow it was .. How he was glued to him, to this wheel … And he approached from the right, and from the left. And crawled on all fours. But all attempts ended with my ruthless «NO»! How a child tried to convince me that there is nothing tastier in the world than this wheel! And he burst into tears, and smiled at me with his most charming smile, only recently picked up, which opened all the doors for him hitherto (well, almost all :).
He even offered to give me a try, he’s not greedy. He himself is a little higher than this wheel, he should be enough for everyone. But all the same, all I heard from me was “NO! IT IS FORBIDDEN. No, the left one is also impossible, as well as the back one. No, the rim is also a wheel, which means it cannot be! It’s enough for you that you stroked him and now your hands are like that, that is, clean. So the child was left with a half-finished wheel, with an unknown taste of soft sweet rubber on the tongue. He didn’t talk to me for two minutes afterwards.
And this is after just the other day he forgave me for the ban on turning out the trash can in the middle of the kitchen and sorting out the trash. And I again stood across the road. After all, these adults do not understand anything, absolutely nothing! Well, who sorts the trash like that?! Well, how can you put blue pieces of paper to orange ones? They are from different galaxies, they will definitely fight in a bucket! On the other hand, the orange peel from an orange, which harmonizes so well with an orange candy wrapper, suddenly turns out to be in a completely different basket … Eh, teach them, teach them …
Although I inflicted the worst insult on him today … I yelled at him. No, not with a voice. He shouted with a glance, shouted with a sternly outstretched forefinger and a sharply pronounced name of the child. And I immediately realized that I was wrong. I just saw his return look and immediately realized that I was a bastard and a scoundrel. Unlike the case with the wheel and bucket, the child’s face did not express resentment or anger. It expressed annoyance, misunderstanding, but above all pain. As if I hit him, or pinched him painfully. Moreover, the pain is contagious, like a virus, which immediately erupts into you and pierces your very heart. And in the eyes of the silent question «For what?!» The child seemed to be saying: “How could you…”
No, well technically I was right, of course. The child begged for scissors from his mother for five minutes, and when she still didn’t give them to him, he hit his mother on the leg with his fist, hit him so painfully, with a swing. That’s when I yelled at him. He probably screamed out of surprise … But the child himself was already frightened of what he had done. Strength, from day to day added, did not calculate. Still, probably, he struck a blow, but he himself was already frightened. And I was frightened, and my mother … And then I inopportunely got into the relationship between mother and son …
My cry of a child finished off. Hiding his face with an indescribable grimace of pain in the hem of his mother, the child sobbed softly …
And now it’s not him comforting the beaten mother, but we take turns carrying him in our arms, passing him from hand to hand, stroking his head, and he only pokes his finger, who should caress him next …
Well, naughty — keep the answer. Missing, twice offended child, scissors had to be compensated with something. For the next half an hour, the child, with rapture and an expression of ecstasy on his face, pounded with his fists on the keyboard buttons of my turned-on work laptop (his old dream), while I stood in the corner and thought about my bad behavior …