Cheyenne

Chatty little kids are my all-time favorite:
Riding the bus home from work yesterday, I met Cheyenne. She was 8 and she hadn't lost a single baby tooth yet. But her premanent teeth were coming in anyway - she showed me. Sure enough, there were three teeth popping up behind her front three bottom teeth. So she has to get the baby ones pulled. And her grandmother (who was with her) is 57 - and clearly that's too old to remember the alphabet. Cheyenne bets if her grandma tried, she'd say it was A-C-X-T-Y. Also, Cheyenne knows addition but not subtraction. And her parents are divorced but her mom doesn't like visiting her dad's house, so they always meet at a Sonic.

Anyway, that last bit kinda hit me funny. I always have a hard time when I encounter kids with divorced parents. Hats off to Cheyenne who seemed totally cool with it - I only wish more kids were lucky like her. Last March, when we went to Florida for Mock Trial, I saw the most awful scene between a father, his two daughters, and the South West Airlines gate attendants. Apparently, the kids were flying home to their mom's and as they got to their gate, they saw the plane pull away. The father was pissed and made a huge scene. That scene resulted in the younger daughter crawling up into a ball beside the counter eating her hair and crying. The older daughter (probably around 14) meanwhile, was pacing like mad listening to her discman trying to drown out the sounds of her dad yelling at the gate attendants. Eventually, security had to lead the man away with his upset daughters in tow. I also had to walk away just to avoid having an anxiety attack - scenes like that are just all too familiar...

It's kids like Cheyenne that make me want to get married and have 6 kids, and it's scenes like the one in Florida that make me wonder if I'm doomed to repeat the mistakes of my parents. I would almost rather not have kids if it'll just mean that I'm going to pass on all of my personal issues and baggage on them. But then I remember that for all that we put up with my dad/stepmonster and all of the drama and bullshit we had to deal with every time we stepped foot in Ohio, we also had one hell of a family to return to in Nebraska. And that makes me think that maybe I'm not so screwed up afterall - clearly I'm my own person, who will determine her own future, and I can have a Wanser family just by deciding that that's the way it'll be.

And I can produce a bazillion happy go-lucky kids just like Cheyenne someday.