I was having a pretty rough week, and it showed, I guess. I was sitting in the laundromat on a Wednesday night, just staring at my clothes going around, when this little kid, maybe seven, came and sat next to me. His mom was folding stuff across the room. He looked at the machine for a second, then looked at me and said, “Mine has a sock that keeps hitting the glass. It sounds like it’s knocking.”I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I just said, “Maybe it wants out.” He thought about it really seriously and then nodded like that made sense.
He went back to his mom after that. But right before they left, he ran over and handed me one of those little fruit snack packets, the Welch’s kind, and said, “You looked hungry.” I wasn’t hungry. I don’t think that was really the point.
I ate them in the parking lot and felt, I don’t know, weirdly okay. Like the week wasn’t so bad. Like a seven-year-old had just decided I was worth a fruit snack, and maybe that was enough.