I took Chuck to the park today, since the weather was great, and she'd finally recovered from the flu that the MIL so kindly gave her a fortnight ago.

It was just the two of us for about half an hour when an Asian woman arrived with one Asian child and one Caucasian child. After an ethical battle royale in my head, I decided that the union was legit. The Caucasian child was there of her own free will, and because of this being so evident, I would spare the Asian woman the heartache of being wrongfully deported to Vietnam or wherever she was from.

The children were playing on the two-man see-saw, laughing and carrying on. The trio were polite, keeping to their half of the park. The mother shushed her children when they got too rowdy and rambunctious, and they'd go silent almost immediately. There's a lot to be said for the Hitler type of mother... or is that just park ettiquette?

Then the young Greek family arrived. They looked to be the picture of a yuppie Sydney couple a few years past their nightclubbing used-by date. The father was a businessman who was on the phone for the whole duration of the visit. The mother looked to be the stay-at-home type, wrought with stress. It was obvious why - her kids, being both under the age of four, were runty little bastards. The daughter kept trying to run onto the road, and the son was completely avoiding all the playgym equipment, going straight for the in-your-face approach. By 'in-your-face,' I meant MINE.

Chuck is a shy little birdy. When it's just us two with strangers around, she doesn't stray too far from my reach. On the walk up, we passed a little chihuahua who barked as if he were born kill her, so she was already shaken. So when this little boy at the park ran up and took the stick she was using to make patterns in the bark, I was defensive and pissed off. I told the little turd to say 'please' before he took a toy from another child,and the father, on his tampon-sized phone, shook his head at the boy, assuming that was an adequate assertion of dominance over his son. What a shithead.

The little boy looked a lot like Squirt from Finding Nemo, just replace the turtle body with a little Greek boy's body. He was a little cutie, and I can understand the difficulty in saying no to a kid with big eyes - I have the same struggle with Charli. But he was totally out of control. He jumped on the middle of the see-saw while the Asian/Caucasian duo were on it, yelling at them to go faster, and screaming when they wouldn't. Their mother/minder sat stoically in the furthermost corner of the park, pleading ignorance.

It was a futile battle with the boy, and stuffed if I'm going to let a little boy bully her out of the park. Chuck and I moved onto the slide, and dammit, it was going to be fun. After a scare with static a few weeks back, she's refused to go down the slide without me, unless I physically sit in the slide, pop her in my lap, and do the 'wheee!' thing to her satisfaction. So we were doing that, and since there was no static to be had today, I was having a good time, too. I fucking hate static.

We were on our third or fourth go, when the little kid discovered my labret. For those not in the know, a labret is a facial piercing under the bottom lip, dead centre. Much unlike the rest of my face, it's silver. He was absolutely mesmerised, running over and ducking his head under my curtain of hair to peek, running off again, then running back. It was cute until about the third time, after that, I just wanted to kick him in the face.

Charli and I had just come off the slippery dip when we were making our way back for another go. The mum was walking around all proud not really watching either of her kids when the little boy ran under me, grinned like an evil little bastard, tripped on my foot, and fell face first into the metal railing supporting the bottom platform to get up to the top of the slide.

I gasped and apologised profusely, the little kid really sconed himself good. Sweeping him up, the mother started FREAKING OUT, yelling at her HUSBAND, and apologising to ME for her son getting in my way. She smacked him pretty bloody hard on the butt, and yelled at him for trying to push in on the slide. She obviously didn't see him trip over my foot, and I was kinda hapy to leave it at that.

After a few seconds of sheer panic, I started laughing REALLY HARD in my head, and it was working its way down to my mouth. The little bastard had doonked himself right between the eyes, and it was swelling up fast. After about two minutes, he had started growing a purple egg on his face, and he wasn't happy about it. Stifling laughter, I looked around for Asian mum and her multicoloured children, who had miraculously disappeared in the face of confrontation/witnessing child abuse.

Charli started to get really sad because the boy was sad, and she was starting to tear up, her bottom lip quivering. I love when children get like that, where they have sympathy pains and can't help but cry when they see another child crying. She climbed up on me and started screaming, 'OUCH! OWWWW! EWWWW! YUCK!!!' and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. So damned cute!

The kid was so far from shutting up, and the mother was unsuccessful in berating her husband off the phone that she picked up both children like they were footballs, threw them in their pram, and started off without the husband. I saw him chasing after them about two minutes later, when he finally turned around to see what all the fuss was about. I walked home laughing, with Charli still shrieking her sympathy pains, confused as hell as to what made mama so happy.

Ahhhh, children. Thank Jeebus I only have the one. I hate kids that aren't mine.

To Greekboy's mother: I lied when I said I was sorry. Your children suck at life.

LighterFluid