In a sandy playground in the middle of a cul-de-sac in Central Texas, a bored six-year-old girl sat with an equally-as-bored four-year-old-boy. Generally, our cul-de-sac was crawling with mostly boys about my age. These were the boys I will give blame for my many scars on my knees from tree climbing (and falling), ass-busting on concrete from bike races, etc. But this day, I was stuck with the kid all on my own.
We sat picking grass shoots and getting splinters at the edge of the sand, talking about whatever it is six- and four-year-olds converse over. Joshua had his eye on a bright yellow dandelion. For whatever reason, after my eyes followed his gaze, I felt extraordinarily compelled to blurt out the following:
“That’s a buttercup and they taste like butter.” I had no idea what had just sprung from my mouth or how it would haunt me for decades.
So, just like we all did with the honeysuckle in the schoolyard, Joshua stuck that little weed in his mouth and closed his cherubic lips around it. Then he gagged and spit and snarled at me and my lie.
“This does NOT taste like butter!” He huffed and puffed and marched away, leaving me in a dust cloud of sand and guilt to reverberate through my conscience for the rest of my life. I had disillusioned an infant.
Let’s be realistic, changing all of an ex-boyfriend’s passwords to IAMANASSFUCK4 was probably in a harsher department than persuading some child to eat a dandelion, but the difference is, who deserved what, you know?
