I’m working behind the children’s desk when I spy a lost-looking adult. It frequently happens that people new to this location walk right past the check-out desk by the front door and then end up asking for help at the children’s desk.

Me: “Hi! Can I help you with anything today?”

Patron: “Um, yes, it’s my first time here.”

Me: “Welcome!”

Patron: “Thanks, I was looking for books about dogs.”

Me: “Okay, books on dogs for kids?”

Patron: “No, for humans.”

We both stop for a second, and she laughs first, then we both laugh.

Patron: “I mean, for adults, please.”

Me: “As someone who works with tiny humans, I understand where you’re coming from! Those books will be upstairs in 636.7.”

Due to various mental health issues (both diagnosed and undiagnosed) and a complicated credit situation, I was a frequent flyer in my high school’s guidance office. Luckily, I clicked with my guidance counselor. He was an admittedly overworked fellow with a dry sense of humor who understood my struggles. My parents and I frankly owe a good chunk of my graduating from high school to him. (I was the classic case of a neurodivergent kid who loved learning, but did not gel with public school. The COVID pandemic did not help.)

Because I saw my counselor a lot, most of the other guidance staff knew my face and name by senior year. On days when my counselor was around but somewhere else in the building for a few minutes, I was allowed to go wait in his office. When his office door was open, I could hear conversations out in reception. About a month before finally graduating, I heard the receptionist greet my counselor one day.

Receptionist: “Your honorary daughter is in your office.”

I was admittedly a little embarrassed by that comment, but also flattered. (For the record, my actual parents are quite supportive of my mental health journey, thank God.) I texted it to my mom, who thought it was sweet.

When I graduated, my parents tried to give my guidance counselor a check as a thank you. He and his wife politely turned it down, but they were touched by the gesture. I’m tempted to email him one of these days and see how he’s doing.

My Grandpa is a retired physics professor, and he was quite good at it, too. One of his favorite complaints that he got on the physics book he published was “Physics is supposed to be hard, and he’s making it too easy!”

Anyway, one year, Grandpa was nominated for a major faculty award that was to be given out at graduation. Graduation rolls around, students graduate, and when they announce his name as the winner of the award, the entire engineering section stands up and starts cheering. According to my grandma, the givers of the award turned to each other and said, “Well, I guess we got that one right.”

Years ago, I discovered a scrawny, very pregnant cat had snuck into my shed and was clearly preparing it for her litter. I’m not a cat person and had no desire for pets, but the poor girl looked so pathetic, I didn’t have the heart to kick her out either. I was going to call animal control, but from what I was told, it was likely that mom, as a feral cat that would be hard to rehome, would be euthanized as soon as the kittens were weaned. So, I ended up deciding not to repair the hole the cat used to get into my shed and resolved myself to the fact that it was going to be her home from here on out.

Once the kittens were born, I had a non-profit come in to trap and spay/neuter everyone before releasing them back into the shed. Whenever I have the hose out, I’ll fill up a few bowls with water for the cats, and occasionally, when it’s really nasty outside, I’ll take them a little food to supplement what they can catch on their own, but otherwise, the cats and I mostly ignore each other.

Eventually, a new batch of kittens showed up in my yard. I paid so little attention to my furry squatters that I’m not sure if this was the result of a failure to spay one of the original cats or if we had a foreign cat join my little colony. Other than resolving to have the nonprofit come back for a second round of spaying, I begrudgingly accepted the new addition to the fur squad.

Then one day, I noticed yet another stray, except this time the stray was human. A boy would show up right after the elementary school bus dropped kids off in our neighborhood and would try to play with the kittens. I had no problem with a brief visit, but that wasn’t what this was. Day after day, the kid would show up, encroaching further into my yard and staying for longer and longer periods until it reached the point, I was getting a little uncomfortable with the extended visits.

Eventually, I went out to speak to [Boy]. As soon as he saw me, he tried to flee out of my yard until I called out to him. Then he froze and turned to me, immediately starting to apologize for being there and looking terrified. He was so afraid that I felt unreasonably guilty, as if I had done something wrong to upset the boy so much. I rushed to assure him he wasn’t in trouble and that I just wanted to talk. I tried sitting down to make myself less imposing and did everything else I could think of to make [Boy] comfortable, but he was still clearly afraid of me.

Then one of the kittens slinked towards [Boy], which surprised me. The cats never approached me; I was lucky if they decided they trusted me enough not to actively flee from me. [Boy] looked longingly at the kitten, then fearfully up at me until I told him he was allowed to pet the kitten. That made him more comfortable, and he finally started speaking with me openly.

He told me his mom and he had left his dad recently and were staying at a friend’s house, and he just wanted to visit my cats. I asked if his mom would be worried about him getting home so late since he was spending so long in my yard, but he told me his mom didn’t get home until long after he did, so she wouldn’t notice.

This concerned me a bit because the boy looked way too young to be home alone for any length of time. I was half right there; he turned out to be seven despite my originally guessing him to be much younger based on his size. That still meant he was one year younger than the minimum age a child was legally allowed to be home alone without supervision in my state; I looked it up.

Eventually, I asked to escort [Boy] home, and once I knew where he lived, I came back later to visit his mom. [Mom]’s response to my visit was somewhere between confused and afraid that I’d be asking about her and her son. I’d eventually learn that [Boy]’s biological father had been emotionally abusive towards [Mom]. It had started out as mostly subtle gaslighting but had escalated once the father started drinking more regularly. Once [mom] realized how this was impacting [Boy], she fled with nothing more than a pack of clothes for each of them to live with a friend. [Mom] had no money and had to take whatever minimum wage job she could manage, and was afraid to try to collect child support for fear that it would increase the odds of the father trying to demand contact with [Boy]. [Boy]’s immediately trying to apologize and flee from me was apparently not a fluke either, I was told he was like that with any large man he didn’t know. Having only his dad as a male role model had apparently taught [Boy] some unfortunate lessons about how to expect other men to behave.

I asked about [Boy] being home alone, but [Mom] couldn’t afford any kind of daycare at the time. I pointed out, as politely as I could, that it wasn’t allowed to have a child that young unsupervised, and she seemed to take this as a threat. She pleaded with me not to report them.

Once I convinced [Mom] I wasn’t trying to threaten her and just wanted to make sure [Boy] was cared for, she settled down some, and we ended up coming to an agreement.

Since [Boy] was already spending his afternoons at my house anyway, we would make that official, and I’d watch him until she got home. He was to come to my door, not my backyard shed, every evening after school.

When he arrived, he would get a snack while he did his homework. I quickly learned he needed a structured time to do homework, or it would never get done. Only after his snack and homework were done was he allowed to go out to visit the felines, but he also got to take out a slice of ham with him to break up and feed to the kittens.

If he had done something special, like getting a good grade on a test, he would earn the right to take out an extra slice with him. I always found it amusing just how excited he would get for as simple a reward as an extra slice of meat, but he clearly considered it a reward worth aspiring towards.

He always made sure the kittens each got their fair share of food when he fed them. Before long, not only would they come to him when he called, but they would line up and take turns being fed one at a time, patiently waiting until he got to them. I was surprised at how well he managed to train them.

I’d never attempted to home the first batch of kittens since they were too feral, but the batch raised by [Boy] were so friendly that together we managed to find new homes for many of them; though [Boy] insisted he be there when a kitten was picked up so he could say goodbye and give the new owners a detailed summary of the kittens every trait and behavioral quirk.

It was really amazing getting to watch [Boy] go from the timid, scared kid that I first met to the happy, outgoing child he became, always talking my ear off about every little thing that happened to him that day. Eventually, [Mom] would get a home of her own, and so she and [Boy] would move away, and I was surprised just how much I missed our afternoons together. [Boy] still insists [mom] bring him for occasional visits even now. Though to this day I’m still not sure whether [Boy] is coming to visit me or the cats.

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Last night was Halloween. My mom likes to hand out candy during trick-or-treating. We have a good crowd of kids in our neighborhood who are well-mannered and remember to say “thank you” when getting their treats. But, of course, my mother always has to find something to complain about. 

Mom: “Some of these kids are too old to trick-or-treat!”

Me: “I don’t see how that’s a problem. I’d rather the older kids and teenagers be out trick-or-treating or accompanying their younger siblings than getting into trouble.”

Mom: “[My Name], some of these kids were as big as you! They’re too big to be trick-or-treating!”

Me: “Mom, I’m only five feet tall! [Husband] was ‘as big as me’ in third grade. [Daughter] is only six and is already up to my chest. I’m not a good litmus test for a kid’s age.”

Mom backed off with a few mutterings about “kids these days” and people being “greedy” but dropped the matter. But, geez, it’s not like the kids are robbing you or something. Eat a Snickers and let the kids be kids for a bit longer.