Welfare House
At the turn of the millennia, a child of the nineties is in his fourth year. The room is spacious and full of old wooden furniture with large bookshelves and sturdy rectangular tables. There are old magazines of nature filled with cool animal facts for kids, in addition to a large collection of works by Dr. Seuss, Mercer Mayer, Richard Scarry, and other such picture books. An antiquated home is the unassuming spot of a welfare office, where women of limited means can come to collect certain things, in addition to a check-up in the free clinic. Playing with kids in the waiting area, the boy momentarily becomes quite fond of his competing racers. The child stands quiet by the abacuses and other strange beaded-wire contraptions that are left there to keep the working-class children entertained. He and a few others are racing each other’s beads, seeing who can swipe the little brightly colored rocks through the curvy-winding path towards the end of the contraption first.
They’re still just beginning to grasp grammar and the rules of communication. Sometimes they will say brutally honest things to each other that will make the other cry, not yet knowing that this is a social norm they must learn to navigate. Each of these children awaits the return of their guardian from the mysterious door in the back— the one where each time it is opened, all that can be seen is a sea of social workers and nurses behind cubicles and tiny rooms, anatomical posters on the wall and colorful depictions of the food pyramid.
The child is not tense, but he is quite bored while waiting for his mother to return, to save him from this repetitive play of rock-paper-scissors, silly stories, and other activities with these unknown kids. It is not his first time waiting here but still, his patience wanes.
After what felt like an interminable span of time, the mother returns with a food stamp in her hand and a description of things she must do to care for herself. Ready to leave, she tells the child to walk beside her. The child waves goodbye to the friends he made. He will never see them again but he doesn’t much care. At least he is reunited with his mother, walking on the street with her as they make the long walk by foot to their cold apartment. The mother points a rock out to the child as they walk. It was a large, smooth, and ovoid thing, perched beneath a small tree on the street.
“Look, a dinosaur egg” she grins.
He sees it and instantly smiles, easily imagining that there might be a little reptile there waiting to emerge. He carries the smile on his face for the rest of the day. When he has entered adulthood he will once remember this occasion and wonder what those other children are up to now. He blinks before mentally moving onto another more salient train of thought.