Two recent entertaining incidents with the kids, and interesting strangers:

#1:

Wednesday, I was in a yogurt/smoothie place with both of them (Little A and her younger brother Little D, who comes with us sometimes). Little A had been having a temperamental sort of day, and was immersed in playing on the iPad as she nursed her mango smoothie, which I didn’t want to take her away from because it’s often a calming thing for her. But Little D was getting restless, so we ended up playing a somewhat rowdier game in the meantime – with me pretending to be a monster chasing him around, and him pretending to shoot me with a Nerf gun (with no actual darts in it).

I should perhaps mention that we weren’t disturbing any other patrons, because no one else was in there at the time, except the staff, who just looked amused. Particularly this one girl, who was watching from behind the cash with a big smile – and at one point, when I was pretending to be a zombie and shuffling forward with arms outstretched and Little D had retreated to right in front of her counter, she leaned over and stage-whispered to him “Shoot for the head, kid, it’s the only way to be sure!”

#2:

This evening, Little A was incredibly manic on the TTC, which has been happening more often than not ever since she stopped playing iPad games on transit out of fear of motion sickness (even though to my knowledge she’s only ever had that happen when playing Blocksworld specifically).

At one point when we’d first gotten on the subway, when she was less manic and more cranky, she’d shaken her fist at a young woman with vibrantly purple hair who happened to be standing in front of the one-way mirror at the front of the train (through which you can actually see out the front window, but only if you stand with your nose literally pressed to the glass). Mistaking the gesture, she said in a mock-plaintive tone “Oh no – don’t stab me! What did I ever do to you?”

Little A, of course, decided that this was the funniest thing EVER, and kept doing it over and over again, though now out of amusement rather than actual anger, and for the whole distance from Bloor up to Sheppard, where the woman eventually got off, she kept wriggling away from me to go after her again and again and again. Thankfully the victim seemed to find it funny rather than annoying, as did a guy standing nearby who initially kept trying to look like he wasn’t watching, and having trouble not cracking up laughing, but eventually gave up the battle completely. But I was getting a little exasperated, and at one point said in frustration “Little A! What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

Very cheerfully, she replied “I’m trying to murder people!” Which got both the purple-haired woman and the guy next to her into another fit of laughter, although I was a little bit alarmed, and responded with something like “Little A! We do NOT murder people on the subway!”, which really didn’t help on the cracking-people-up front.

But later, on the bus, she asked me “Muime, what does murder mean?”

A little surprised, I told her “It means to kill people. That’s why I was a little disturbed to hear you say that on the subway.”

“Ohhhh,” she replied, with a thoughtful look. “I thought it just meant to bother them.”