Kendall

The Tale Of Kendall

We have a toddler in our daycare named Kendall. Both of her parents are teachers, and Kendall is very advanced for her age group. One day I was observing her jumping off a foam climber piece. She was saying “I can not jump down!” then saying “I CAN’T jump down!” She was barely eighteen months, and had already grasped the concept of contractions. You could tell Kendall’s parents had taken a lot of time to teach her things early on.

I admired her parent’s tenacity, but their obsession with their daughter was often the discussion du jour among the teachers at the center. They wanted the best for their daughter, and if we weren’t measuring up in their eyes, they didn’t hesitate to let us know… in a myriad of ways.

Kendall, though very “book” smart, didn’t always have her mental balloons in a bunch. We would often find her stuffing wood chips in her mouth, or staring off into space as she was walking, bumping into things. She had an unseemly gait, and pumped her elbows like a speed walker no matter how fast she was walking. She had enormous, watery blue eyes, and scant, dishwater blonde hair. She looked like she was half bald, because she would pull hunks of her hair out whenever she was upset. She was so thin, shoes wouldn’t stay on her feet. (Imagine Gollum from Lord of the Rings as a toddler).

She could barely see where she was going when she was in the playlot, because her parents insisted on making her wear an obnoxious oversized sun hat whenever she went outside. All that, coupled with the appliquéd and overdone baby clothes she wore, made her stand out among her peers.

One summer day, the children were playing outside with some Nerf ™ balls that had been donated to the center by one of our wealthier parents. Kendall was sitting alone in a corner, cradling one of the Nerf™ footballs like it was her greatest material possession. I swore I could hear her hissing “Myyy Precioussssssss!”

I noticed after a while Kendall looked like she was chewing on something. I went over there, and discovered she had bitten a patch off the end of her precious football. There were minute blue, yellow and red chunks of foam around her lips, mired in boogers and drool. I asked her to spit it out, and when she did not, I pried open her mouth to do a finger sweep. Out came a piece of Nerf™ ball the size of a large grape. There were other flakes in her mouth, but I got the majority of the offending lump removed.

I wiped off her mouth, washed my hands, and Kendall wobbled off, her sun hat flopping gaily.

We wrote our incident report, and thought nothing more of the afternoon’s happenings until the next morning.

Her mother and father came in with smug looks on their faces. The father handed Kendall to me, as my co- worker prepared Kendall‘s breakfast..

The mother approached me and said “I thought you should see this.”

She was holding a small snack size Ziploc baggie.

I looked perplexed as I tried to decipher what I was seeing.

Inside the bag were miniature blue, yellow and red foam pieces.

“We found these in her poop this morning, and was wondering what they were,” the mom told me, as she slammed the baggie down on the counter. There was condensation inside the bag. You could tell the contents were “fresh off the press.”

My co worker had to go into the other room, because she was fighting laughter. I kept a straight face until both parents were safely out of the building, and then laughed until I literally cried.