The past three days I’ve been treated to the cutest kids and since their stories are still making me laugh, I thought I’d share.
The first kid was an exuberant, extremely fast-talking three-year-old named Gussie. She has a thick head of brown hair that was forever falling in her eyes that she brushed away with a fast flick of the back of her right hand whenever she was making a point,which she did a lot.
Her main conversation was talking about her cat, Flower. This cat apparently is a superhero. “Flower eats the monsters under the bed. She eats them all up. We call her Bouquet now, ‘cuz she got fat on the monsters.”  I cannot make this stuff up. I tried not to laugh, but she was so earnest that I had to tousle her hair and chuckle. I find myself just walking around saying “Flower got fat, and we call her Bouquet now.” What a lovely family.
We’re hosting a Fairy Party in March and have had a signboard up by the front door announcing this. Sunday I was working alone and I heard the thunder of kids’ feet careening around the corner. I practically heard the screech of their sneakers as they shouted,”A FAIRY TEA PARTY!!! We love fairies!” Then two sisters came in and went right to me at the counter. “What can you tell us about the party? Can we dress up? We have fairy costumes.” I told them, yes, of course they could dress up. “Will you be dressing up?” I’m not really a fairy dress-up sort of person, but I do actually have a pair of wings.
Then they looked for fairy books, and they knew right where to go, and added almost haughtily,  “We buy all our fairy books here.” I love it when kids take ownership of the store. They found things faster than I could and helped reorganize the section, so that every fairy was with her right group sport fairies apparently cannot be intermingled with pet fairies.
The last little kid was Norah, and she was shy at first. She opened up when I asked her where she lived as I knew she was visiting Vermont. She was quiet and I said, “Are you from New York City?” (as every customer I had yesterday was). She said, “Yes, I live in New York City.” Her parents looked at her and said, “Sweetie, where do we live?” The little one said New York one more time. Her mother finally said, “Norah, we live in Montreal.” Norah got an impish look on her face and said, “That’s right! We live in Montreal, not New York City.” And then she burst out laughing.
These are the days when I just love my job.