The Laundro-brat

So I had to take some clothes to the coin washers, which is like a little human Petri dish.  You just don't know what types you'll see.  Suburbans whose washers are on the blink? Grandmas on a fixed income? Regulars who are scraping along everyday?  Gang-bangers shaking their pockets for stray bullets? (I saw this one time).

Well, Little Daughter and I shoulda taken pix, cause this creepy little kid kept getting WAY TOO CLOSE to Sophia and me.  Zero sense of personal space.  And the mother?  Zero sense of ... anything.  Perfectly content to let her 3 year old get all up in strangers' bidness.  I'm not kidding. 

I had bought Sophie this little electronic game and she was sitting on my lap while I was holding it and that kid kept prairie dogging up next to me and then thrusting his big head slam in the middle between my face and my lap.  He showed no understanding of "Back up", or "What are you doing?" or  "Excuse me!" or "Please move!" 

He just hung his head in that space looking at the little electronic game while I tried to see if the strange particulates that were suspended in his Buckwheat hairdo were moving.  That's still up for debate. Another little boy appeared and sent the first one into fits of screamgasm, neither one spoke any modern language. 
The first one whooped his way around the laundromat with the other, swinging from cart to cart until he remembered Sophie's electronic game and he came to a sudden stop.  He grabbed No 2's shirt and pointed, and then they both were hovering over the digital read-out like they had just discovered the wheel.  No matter what I said, it was like talking to Helen Keller's progeny.  I finally told Sophie to just put the game away, which was fine with her, because by then they were both picking their noses and trying to grab the toy. 
I think the mother was hoping someone would just take them. 
Good luck with that.
I'd rather take home a real Petri dish with Bubonic Plague festering in it.