Monday, Jul. 14, 2003 + 9:37 a.m.
Thank God for small miracles. It just so happens that while staying home with the kids has its challenges, it seems to be agreeing with me. We spend our days playing games and going to cool places and eating kid-food (not at all like big people food and much more fun). We�ve been spending quite a lot of time at the local waterpark, �The Beach�, which, while it does have sand, isn�t anything close to a real beach, but the kids like it and there are lots of interesting things to look at and I can slime through my day of leisure all the more slowly and sluglike. Oh, yeah, and while I�m not exactly losing a ton of weight, (surprise, surprise) I am getting a tan. Wooooowweeeeeeeee. So, we go two or three times a week to this �beach� place so I can attempt to maintain the tan and the five kids can frisk and frolic in the water like tadpoles. Unfortunately, this is not our own private oasis of fun in the sun, but in fact, we have to SHARE this place with others!!! Some of these others are rather good-looking. Others are NOT. Sometimes busloads of rabid children are dropped off with their various groups to invade whichever pool I happen to be lounging by and I�m soon doused in their games of splashy-splashy or forced to listen while they brag of magnificent aquatic feats of the rare 8-year-old superhero. One day we were graced with a group of �special� kids who came on their �special� fun-sized bus. Don�t get me wrong. I am all for the rights of the �special� and thankful for them gracing those of us who are not so special with their interestingly different set of skills and outlook on life. In fact, I appreciate that my kids can experience children of all sizes, shapes, colors and flavors in our wacky rainbow fun fruit-flavored universe. But�..sometimes it�s not all a rainbow of fun. It was a typical day. My littlest guys, both three-year olds (one boy and one girl) were frolicking in the shallow part of The Pearl, a smaller heated pool named for a HUGE sculpture of a pearl inside a giant oyster enveloped in a tiny waterfall. It�s supposed to be artistic I think, but I digress�.. So, we�re enjoying ourselves when the special bus arrives. The �special� kids decided upon The Pearl as opposed to the other pools and slides probably for the same reason that we did, which was the fact that it was damn cold outside and this pool was warm and soothing. This is no naturally urine-heated pool, either. It has a REAL heater and lots of nice chemicals to kill the funk from thousands of strange freaks and their various bodily oozings. So we�re at The Pearl and they�re at The Pearl. Everybody seems to be enjoying themselves and playing nice with each other�� ��until��� I spotted him right off because he was much, MUCH bigger than all the other kids. And he was the darkest black kid that I think I�ve ever seen in my life. In a sea of small, mostly light-colored skin, this kid was bound to stick out for his size and skin color alone. But unfortunately that was not the only reason he was standing out. He immediately made his way to the area where my littlest kids were playing. He sat with the shallow water barely covering his gargantuan heel. He was smiling and letting the water slip through his huge fingers and then running his hand back into the water again. And then he was up. Up and moving. Looking for something. And he found it. FEET. He approached one of my three-year-olds who happened to be sitting and playing and began to tickle his feet. Little B (as I�ll call this child I watch for a small weekly wage) seemed to be enjoying the foot-tickling while my daughter stood by completely horrified by the scene (she is after-all 6 months older and MUCH more mature). She ran to Mommy and huddled beneath my towel. I looked on cautiously, but not really alarmed in any way. I just figured this very large and sweet child was trying to be friendly in his own way. And friendly he was. He didn�t just tickle the various feet he found in the pool, he GRABBED the feet and held on, as if for dear life. He tickled until the owner of the feet escaped or our large friend spied another pair of more interesting feet. It didn�t take long until the scene resembled something from a cheap horror film where little children were screaming and running from the pool. After the shallow end of the pool had emptied of all other feet, this kid went back to Little B again, who, while unsure of what was going on, seemed not to mind at all really. After about five minutes of this, Little B got out of the pool and looked at me inquisitively as if to say, �is this OK, or is there something weird about that guy?� Before either of us got a chance to utter a single word, Crazy-foot-tickling guy had lumbered out of the pool and was quietly approaching. He didn�t wait until there was a free pair of feet attached to a nice sitting body --- NO. He grabbed Little B�s foot right out from under his standing body and began to tickle, tickle, tickle. At this point my daughter screamed, unsure of the safety of her entire world when a huge person (much bigger than Mom) can jump out of a pool, run up and grab his choice of appendages and have his way with it. I carefully studied this child, who couldn�t have been more than thirteen, and said, � I think he�s done being tickled, Sweetie� to which he then glanced at MY feet. �Oh, no thank you�, I said and with that, he seemed satisfied and walked across the patio to the next pair of feet with a grin of unimaginable happiness on his face. I did not look to see if his joy had spread to other areas of his body because I was afraid what I might see. He kept moving and grabbed the next pair of feet, which unfortunately for him, belonged to a teenage girl surrounded by about six of her friends. She didn�t realize that this kid was �special� and immediately splashed him with a rash of obscenities so vile that I was embarrassed to view the display. So, he walked on smiling to the next lounge chair and the next and the next until he was out of my sight. I realized at that moment that this place was absolute heaven to this kid. He had a fetish, however weird, and it was his. No one could spoil it or make him embarrassed about it. Unlike most of the foot-fetish-folks you may hear about who like to lick feet, clip toenails or just glance upon a beautifully pedicured pair, this youngster was INTO tickling and in a BIG WAY. For a person with a fetish this strong, a circular pool and surrounding patio with almost-naked women lounging on chairs with their feet completely exposed and offered forth so generously must render him defenseless against any sort of restraint that his �specialness� might be capable of. The rest of his life must pale in comparison to his visits to the pool or shoe store. We wear water shoes at The Pearl on Tuesdays now.
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I am the Grim Reaper! Master of all that is |
