In a doctor's office for 2.50 hours

I have little to do but observe people. There's a woman sitting a couple seats down from me. She looks like she could be in her late twenties, perhaps early thirties. She has three children with her. A baby girl stays perched in her arms, probably about 5 weeks old (I don't really know). She keeps pulling off the bracelets on her mother's wrist and throwing them to the floor. I never found out her name. "Seth, share the blocks with Eden." Seth is about five I think, Eden about three. She reads to them "Green Eggs and Ham." I remember this one. And then "The Cat and the Hat." I remember that one too. The mother is tired of reading stories to them. So they read to each other.

Seth and Eden are looking at a book full of animals. Seth is naming the animals for his little sister. This animal to the left is an. . .





eel.

And this:









Is an even bigger eel.

I love it. I can imagine myself reading to my little sister. I am six and she is three. I cannot read, but that really does not matter at all. Like Seth, I am an excellent interpreter of pictures. And I am quite confident in my assertions.

Or, the more likely scenario is that my sister is reading to me. Even as a three year-old my sister is quite brilliant. She says "And all these words are what they say" as she turns each page. There is no arguing with her logic. She does not like it when I say "uh huh." I must say, my sister's whims are really quite arbitrary. She would rather I just say "yeah." So I say "uh huh" a lot, just to get on her nerves (I really haven't changed much since then). And I pretend to not listen. So she says "Robbie, if you keep doing that then I'm not reading."

Ah, timeless.