There you go again, watching those damn kids as they wander down the aisle with the packs of gum. You know one of them will try it — will look over both shoulders, try to catch you unawares, and snag a peppermint Orbit. The merchandise! Paws off the merchandise, you hound.
“I’m so tired of you people.” I bet you are, Betty Gee.
They curl around the corner. Gum, apparently, is not the play today; they feel your gaze. Good work, soldier. Good work, Betty Gee.
You take kids camping and they tamper with your settings. You enter the excursion with an idea of the things you might see, might hear, might have to problem-solve or deescalate. You prepare for complaints about the temperature, or about how you shopped for the wrong snacks —the little shit which seems so trivial now but didn’t when you were fourteen, and you prepare to pinch yourself should you become short with them, forgetting that.
But when you bring the last blanket from the car the kids are playing card games, checking in and catching up, cashing in the weeks they’ve gone without seeing each other. You feel kind of bad, not really but kind of, when you make everybody stop so you can talk about boundaries. They are teenagers after all — big big kids traversing the thin copper wire to adulthood.
Copper burns pretty. You wish you’d had some with you last night. After beef jerky ramen you took a short hike to a swath of prairie. It was either the moon, filtered by the clouds, or the vapor of your breath that shaded in the prairie grass like pencil strokes on black paper — you couldn’t tell. Farther off, taillights buddied up on the interstate and headed south. Copper, burning blue and green, would have tinted all of that nicely.
It’s not the main events of this work that catch you off guard. You help someone learn to set up a tent; but it’s the way they fall into it, their first pass through a zippered door, that feels important. You talk about building a good fire, and you build it; but it’s a kid striking the flint and steel they bought right before the trip, working to light a pile of dryer lint because dammit they want to be a woodsman, that seems promising. You decide you’ll keep the fire going so long as there’s a teenager warming by it, thinking they’ll all be mummied-up in their cold weather bags by 1am; but at 2:30 you’re still making trips into the trees bordering the site, finding anything halfway dry that will burn long enough for them to finish quiet rebellions against their doubts, their peers, and the Betty Gees that watch them from a distance.
I’m tired’a all these labels, they say. I just wanna exist. Why all these damned labels?
I don’t know. That’s what you tell them: I don’t know. Copper would have been a more concrete offering. Copper burns pretty. Check this out — look at what happens. Toss it in the fire and let the colors go.
It’s like paint, they might say. Imagine if it was paint — if we could poke sticks in there and they’d be dipped in paint, and we could write on the sky.
I know. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
You take kids camping and they tamper with your settings. They surprise, trigger, and tease you, all in a kind of love. They ask you all kinds of questions and they draw, from your soft spots, all kinds of promises. Like stopping at the gas station on the way home; we brought money!
Sure. We can do that.
The kids come around the near end of the shelves, bags of chips in hand. They set them on the counter by the register and fix their eyes on lottery scratch tickets in the window underneath you. Your nose twitches and you scan the chips, shaking your head.
“You guys aren’t old enough for scratch tickets.”
One of them rolls their eyes and quips. “No duh.” The glare is mutual.
After you scan the chips you hold out an expectant, open palm. “What else?”
“Nothing.” They look at each other and then at you, confused. “The chips. That’s it.”
“Sure it is.” Those damned kids. Keep it up, Betty Gee.
“No, seriously, look.” They both step back and run their hands through the cubbies on their sweatshirts, pull the pockets inside out of their sweatpants. “See? You believe us yet?”
Ugh. Might not be your battle to win today, Betty. Probably a pack of Oreos stuck in the back of their pants, or maybe a small Red Bull. The merchandise! They’re always getting their paws on the merchandise.
They hand you cash (stolen?) and take their change angrily, snatching the chips from the counter and turning to walk out. You think it’s over until an adult, about the same age as you, jogs out of the bathroom to catch up to them, calling out their names and making sure they got what they needed. The adult turns around and, when their eyes lock with yours, senses you immediately — senses your vigilance, except they call it meanness.
“Whadya want?” you ask, crossing your arms. Get ’em out of here, Betty Gee.
“Nothing!” A cunning smile splits their lips. “I’m all good.” They flash a small rectangular item at you, pinched between the fingers on their hand. “Fresh breath for days, baby!” And before you can raise an objection they’ve gone, burst out the door and into the car and peeling into the road, setting the caravan home. You come around the counter and stand in the doorframe, watching the gum get away, and you notice a poky feeling on the sole of your shoe. When you lift your foot and look down you see a strand of copper wire curled on the pavement, right where the thief stood taunting you. These people. You’re so tired of them.
But at the end of the day, Betty Gee, the fire burns down and you lose. You goddamn lose.
