I Succumbed To The New Brut, And I Like It

You know how sometimes you're watching a soapie or a teen drama or something like that on television and you think to yourself, "That would never happen in real life!" Well, I believe that some of those things are quite as far fetched as they first seem.

The child care centre exposes to me to a wide cross section of the community. We have families from all sorts of backgrounds in all sorts of situations. Weird shit happens everyday.

The other day I was talking to one of the fathers at the centre. He's a builder/developer type guy, and his relationship with his wife has recently broken down. He was talking to me about his new phone, showing me the screensaver for it and talking about his love of golf. A week before Christmas he kidnapped his two children from his estranged wife and disappeared.

Yesterday one of the mothers was telling me about how she's having trouble finding a new place to call home. Apparently the place she's in has a next door neighbor who is loco. Last night the next door neighbor went bonkos and decided to attack this mother's car with a knife. I saw all the slash marks on the boot and down the side of the car this morning.

Today, one of my co-workers was unable to come in. Her sister was haemorrhaging, she had miscarried her baby. Terrible business.

These sorts of things are an unfortunate part of life, and they do happen to people around all of us everyday. I can sometimes understand why some people are so down on the world, but at the same time, that's life. The world keeps on turning. Life goes on.

Not all of the centre stories are horrible ones. We've had a few new additions, some new kids on the block. They all start off so small, but it doesn't take them too long to be up and about. We've got one little girl at the centre now who wasn't even born when I started there. They've all got definite personalities from the outset too. It's cool stuff.