Friends(1)

Connie is my daughter. She is five years old, and she has two friends – Lyn and Sisi.

Lyn is a boarder of our house. Well, matter of fact, her whole family are our boarders living next-door to us. The two little girls didn』t really hit it off right after Lyn』s family moved in, but the fact that they are the only two girls of their age among the many boys of this block has left them no other options. And it didn』t take long before they started playing together.

I don』t like Lyn, and I have good reasons.

First off, she』s ratty. Which is no big deal itself given that her parents run this beef business. They basically truck cattle from other provinces to the local slaughterhouse, kill the animals, and then sell the meat. They are busy and therefore sometimes have to work in the slaughterhouse with their children in tow, which is no problem inside their family but causes collateral damage on me.

My wife is a neat freak, and she has the gift of sleuthing out any new teeny tiny crud on my computer』s keyboard and jumping at that and ruining my word files. Connie knows the neat culture of our house, but Lyn apparently doesn』t. The first time Connie had her little friend over and we ended up having a footprinted floor, which by the way stank of animal turds.

My wife got really mad at me cuz she thought it my responsibility to neat-proof everything while she was away. Hey by the time I saw the first mucky footprint I knew I was dead meat, but that had been the sunk cost right? To further that theory, marginal loss incurred by more footprints on the floor would, you know, pale into insignificance compared with a happy afternoon of my girl that would otherwise turn sour if I extradited the grubby girl, my thanks to N. Gregory Mankiw btw.

Second off, she』s wicked. Connie has a lot of toys, but she』s unfortunately inherited this personality of ingenuousness and generosity from his father, which proves no match for Lyn when the two girls trade their petty tricks on who to play whose toy. It』s always Connie』s toy to play and Connie to do the cleaning-ups after they』ve messed up the floor. Bad, isn』t it? Talk about bad.

Lyn is an abettor, a hardened one.

「Tell your dad to open that drawer!」

「You ask your dad for that」

…

Those from Lyn the Abettor. I didn』t take that seriously at first and thought them pranks between little girls, until I got to realize what a drama queen this girl was.

The other day, a boy named Ray who also lived in this block whooshed past the two girls running his new skateboard, and I saw Lyn burst into tears sobbing.

Liar! I would have taken her out by a red card if this had been a soccer game! It was a dive!

Lyn』s mother made a big issue of it, exactly the proper outcome in Lyn』s playbook, and what was supposed to be a dustup between kids just turned into a full-scale ruckus between two families. The two families have cut ties with each other ever since.

You know what, I』d credited Lyn with things like rustic naivety, even by then, and truth? I』d been hanging by a thread. It could have been Connie getting set up by the drama queen.

I started shunning Lyn, but it didn』t work well. I tried to reason Connie out, but she wouldn』t budge. She did have a point though: I』ll quit Lyn if you can kill my time better.

I can』t. I have a Master』s Degree, I』m a fluent bilingual, and I could always come up with a theory about literally anything under the sun. But when it comes to babysitting a five year old for a whole afternoon, I need help.

To be continued...