I shared my train ride into work this morning with a platoon of third-graders on a field trip from their suburban elementary school to the Clark Planetarium downtown. Normally, any scenario in which I’m shut up inside a metal box with 60 excitedly chattering eight-year-olds would leave me huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth, and muttering nonstop profanities aimed at a universe that could be so cruel and indifferent. Today’s experience, however, wasn’t that bad. Today my irritation was offset by amusement at one particular little boy and girl sitting across the aisle from me.
The boy was bending the ear of an adult woman — a teacher maybe, or perhaps a PTA mom, but definitely someone with the group who shared some level of intimacy with the boy — holding forth in a very intense manner about all the things he does not eat. First on the list were peanuts, which his sister is allergic to. If she were to eat one, her throat would close up and she would most likely die within seconds (this is a pretty close approximation of the boy’s actual words, incidentally; in addition to being terribly solemn and intense for his age, he was also surprisingly eloquent). Because of this danger, there are no peanuts in his home, and that is fine by him, because he does not like them. (He virtually spat out the words describing his distaste for the humble but potentially sororicidal goober.) He then went on to enumerate numerous other foods which do not pass his personal muster, spelling out in great detail exactly what he dislikes about each, then pausing after each mini-rant to let the steam rebuild before launching himself anew.
As I eavesdropped on this overwhelmingly one-sided conversation, I had a sudden, very clear impression of this boy as a crotchety old man, leaning on his cane, maybe slapping a Formica table-top (or whatever synthetic surface they’re using on tables 70 years from now) for emphasis, haranguing some poor waitress or nursing-home aide with exactly the same opinions he was spewing today. I am certain I saw exactly what this boy will someday be like, and it was exactly what he is right now.
That vision made me smirk a bit. But what really pulled a smile out of me was the little girl sitting beside him. While the grown-up woman was nodding and saying encouraging but vaguely disconnected things like “uh-huh” — as you do when a child is babbling at you and you’re really not paying attention — the boy’s classmate was making a supreme effort to ignore him, staring out the window with the intensity of a hawk on a telephone pole watching for a kangaroo rat. However, she couldn’t block him out entirely, and would occasionally glance at him as if to try and determine if he was finished yet. Then he’d start complaining again and she’d turn back to the scenery. On one of these occasions, I saw her make an impatient little hand gesture and roll her eyes, and I could practically hear her thinking to herself, “oh, please.” And I saw then exactly what she was going to be like as an old woman.
People never really change that much, in my opinion. It seems to me that our basic temperament and personality is locked in pretty early, and even though we do change and grow over time, there is a core part of us that is what it is. Sometimes, when you look at a child, you can see it. You know what the eight-year-old will be like when they’re eighty. And sometimes, when you look at an eighty-year-old, you see the eight-year-old they must’ve once been.
Those two kids are probably going to end up married, you know.
