Sunday, December 09, 2007

7x365: Lady in a home decor fabric store

We were there to look for upholstery fabric because mom was redoing the rocking chair and had plans for both couches: the one my foster brothers trashed by picking at the holes until it bled excelsior and cotton stuffing and the 'Fry and Blackburn' that an antique dealer offered mom $500 sight unseen after she had described it to him sometime in the 80s.

I wandered around, touching everything I could reach but eventually tired of it. I found a seat near the door and resumed my knitting. By the age of seven I had already spent several years of directionless knitting with the same skein of seafoam-green and pink varigaged yarn and was partway through kniting another... thing to be unraveled when she approached me.

She seemed friendly enough and she asked me if I could knit her a scarf. I said yes without hesitation and began to think of all the wonderful colours I could knit into a scarf for this friendly stranger lady. A couple of weeks later I realized that because she hadn't left me any way of contacting her I'd never see her again, and she probably wasn't serious in the first place.

But I was completely serious when I agreed to do it and I felt like I'd been lied to and made fun of. Why do adults do that to kids? They can be such assholes.