Just call me Spirit-Crusher...

. I have some interesting stories to share with you though, and one of them involves the moniker "Spirit-Crusher." Are you excited?

After my last blog post about "chilluns" I've made conscious efforts to rekindle my child-centered affections. I really do love kids. They're cute, I can play cute little games with them, I don't have to change them if I don't want to, and most of the time they say absolutely hilarious things. HILARIOUS things. I went to visit the sister of a very good friend of mine/ her three kids (who are all under the age of 7 and are the most well-behaved, precious, adorable little humans I've ever watched and played with) and pretty much every time one of them opened their mouth they made a side-stitching comment that left my jaw aching from smiling so hard :)

When I see pictures of toddlers/ relatively-children, I often get a little smile and think "Awwwww!" :)  I feel like I know the children of a bunch of girls I lived with my freshman year even though I have never met their kids and I love that. :) They're great parents, the majority of them. There are a few though that need some lessons on etiquette and appropriate postings. Here begins the sad, sad, sad story.....


I had to delete three friends over the weekend for posting what I definitely considered to be inappropriate pictures of their children. It made me sad; both for their children and for these girls.


I think we all might recall a little "naked time" as a few of these mothers put it. I know I can remember how fun it was to roam around clothing-less after a bath as a very small child- I did it plenty of times and I remember giggling like a lunatic while running around with a towel hovering over my head like a magic carpet. I probably shrieked at the top of my lungs, did some sort of "kiddie naked dance", babbled about whatever in any number of languages, and finished off by diving into a warm fluffy towel straight from the clothes dryer. (my mother was so good to me...)

The only difference between then and now is the fact that my mother never posted pictures of these events in a social media setting. Any pictures of Post-bath Naked Me are stored in a box full of Polaroid film photos (yes, the kind you had to shake in order to get them to develop) and they can be accessed at leisure by people I actually wouldn't be too miffed it they saw Naked Me.

I deleted these friends because they didn't have discretion. In my mind, taking pictures of those who don't have the ability to either give or deny permission to take or post a picture of them naked is completely out of bounds. The elderly and young children fit into this category, along with completely obliterated college students or Spring Break-ers too drunk to notice that someone has a camera pointed at them after they've stripped off.

You wouldn't take a picture of your mother nude, right?! (If you said "Yes I would" to this, you need some serious counseling and perhaps a good brain bleaching...) You wouldn't take a picture of your grandmother nude, right?! (Double if you answered this one "Yes I would"...) You wouldn't post a picture of a younger sibling nude, right?! (Triple, you sicko-creepers.....)

Maybe it's something about the area I'm in right now (it's literally deemed Baby Capitol of the World) but people have no boundaries when it comes to children (I'll explain this phenomenon in my "Spirit-Crusher" story in just one minute). I haven't ever met the children of these three mothers, yet I've been forced to repeatedly view their children's respective genitalia- it's pretty much "surprise paedo-porn" on your newsfeed ("WHOA- hello! I didn't ask to see that!"). I reported the mothers before I deleted them because 1) I was horrified that someone would ever do this as it's repulsive and totally out of line, 2) If someone was a total freak and liked looking at little children naked they absolutely could (these pictures were public not "friends only", 3) I felt like a pervert. I took a shower and tried to expunge those images out of my head but they wouldn't really disappear, which left me feeling dirty, disconcerted, and disgusted.My brain was branded with baby penises. Awkward.

People here have some interesting ways of (dealing?) interacting with their kids as well. The most popular is the zone-out ("My child is screaming blue-fecking-murder about something; this has been happening all day so I am choosing to just ignore him"). The second is the brush-off, which leads us to my "Spirit-Crusher" story.


Spirit. Crusher. (Soul Eater? Dementor? 300/Braveheart Combo?) Raaaaah! It sounds like a name for a pit-bull or some freakish carnival ride that has people plummeting to their deaths under Niagara Falls, right? Along with the "grrrawr!" factor that comes with the moniker, it apparently describes a personal character trait of mine.


We've all been through the scenario where we meet a weird guy/girl and think, "It doesn't, no, it can't get any weirder than that person. It just isn't possible.", then the next day/week/month someone manages to outdo them, giving you an "Okay, I didn't think that was possible for someone to be even more odd...whoa." moment where your mind was completely blown? Well, I had one of those, except it was a "I just met a parent/child duo even stranger/worse than the last one I wrote about" moment. This seems to happen frequently and (gladly) true to Newton's Law, this reaction was met with an equal and opposite reaction of adorable little-kid-edness that will warm your heart once I'm finished describing my cold one.

This nickname was not bestowed upon me by a newspaper for single-handedly managing to take down a gang boss or a coke dealer nor by the city mayor or prime minister for saving the lives of three old ladies after rescuing them from separate burning buildings. No, it came about in an entirely new and....unique...way. Essentially, I received this dub by a woman at the regional hospital where I went for a brainbox appointment (you know, just checkin' out what's up inside my skull again...).


I went to the hospital for my appointment and, since I got there about 20 minutes early (they like to triple check insurance info there...), I was semi-snoozing in the waiting room. When I closed my eyes in hopes of getting rid of what was one of the worst headaches ever, the waiting room was empty, save for myself and the secretary behind her desk. I tilted my head back against the wall, seeking any sort of relief for the ice-pick pressure and after a few moments I was able to tune into the tick of the clock, the clack of the secretary's keys, and the sound of her foot tapping. I decided to make it even more tranquil so I put my earbuds in and I closed my eyes; I had about 15 minutes until my appointment and I was focusing on some relaxation techniques I'd learned during my time at Stanford. I felt as though my headache might actually be getting better until I unexpectedly felt a hand in very close proximity to a very...."sensitive"...area of my body. I came screaming out of my tenuous reverie to find a small child patting my....let's just say "upper leg".

"Whoa..."
Skip to 0:14 for my precise reaction. Except for "dog"...put in the word "kid".

I looked around for a mother to whom I could gasp, "Huh?? What?!" at but saw no one. Not at the desk, not getting a magazine, and not at the glugging water pitcher with those flimpsy cone-shaped paper cups. I was at a loss. This random little toddler was standing next to my legs, patting me (which I put an end to by awkwardly pulling my satchel into my lap, becoming incredibly stiff and confused), and looking at me.

The little girl was probably an early two years old (along with being tenuous around children comes the inability to properly estimate age...) and she started to climb on me. Patting my....leg....and then climbing on me. I'm not a touchy-touchy-feely-feely person so I was already incredibly uncomfortable.

The only thing that would come out of my mouth was, "Eeeeeuuurrrrgh? Ummmmm.....uhhh....haaaah. Rrrr?"

I just...I was speechless haha. I had no idea what to do beside gently kind of freak out. I am so hesitant around random children it isn't even funny.

I stood up and walked over to grab a mint from the secretary's desk but all this did was make the girl's eyes see "CANDY!" I didn't want to give her one because kids are allergic to all sorts of weird stuff as of late and I didn't want her to choke and die and then get myself thrown in jail for attempting to appease the kid. This mint-jaunt caused a temper tantrum like none. other.

I put my earbuds back in (noise canceling technology rocks my world...) I leaned back in my seat again, put my satchel back in my lap and attempted to tune out the now ridiculously voluminous shrieks of the small angry toddler who was back at my leg poking me for candy. I wanted to yell but I thought, "It's a little kid. And despite your likely-seizure-related headache, you can't just scream at a child for being annoying, especially in a neurology clinic- and you can't shout because other people probably have headaches too, they're just lucky and are enclosed in rooms where they can't be hunted down by random small candy-desiring humans."

So there I was, attempting to focus on my awful headache and what I was going to tell my doctor when the little girl started climbing on me. She was grabbing my trousers and standing on my feet and I refused to open my eyes for fear or throwing up because of my light-sensitivity (which was growing worse with every scream from this kid). It stopped for a moment and I had just relaxed my shoulders in relief when I felt small hands grabbing at my shirt from the left side, making me jump. The kid was grabbing at my glasses, plucking my earbuds none-so-gently from my ears, poking me, and literally climbing on me. I plucked her off, physically reoriented her to face away from me, and "shooed" her a bit. Apparently her mum had come back in and, when I gave an almighty groan of "WTF?!?"-ness as I pushed her forward gently, the mum goes, "You could at least say hi- thanks for crushing my child's spirit. She was just being friendly. You should be ashamed for being so rude. Come here Silla. Never you mind her, she's just a spirit crusher."

I stared at her, thought for a moment and said, "Using baby talk to make a point is pathetic. Beside, it's 7AM. I am about to have a seizure and I have the mother of all headaches. I go in to see my neurolgist in a few minutes and I was attempting to think of something to say to him when you decided to leave your child alone with me. I am not a babysitter, I'm not a TV, I'm not any sort of entertainment. I do not have any sort of obligation to your child and I have no desire to have any sort of verbal interaction with a child that is carrying on in the incredible manner your child is managing right now. And as for "spirit crusher"  you're being absolutely ludicrous. You child will never remember me. You're just bitter for God knows what reason and you need to be quiet before I say some really choice things. You're an inconsiderate and irresponsible slouch for leaving your child to a random stranger. Like I said, I'm no one's babysitter. And even if I had wanted to, your child was all over me and was screaming so loud that I couldn't possibly manage legitimate words. Oh, and your daughter wants candy. "

Needless to say, seizures put me in a rather black mood.....