Today was the most stress I've had since I started my part-time job working over at the petting bank. You remember I have that internship in the finance department, mostly admin stuff: filing and data entry, making coffee, you know, the intern's burden. Anyway, the internship's all for class credit, which means I get to put on a shirt and tie, catch the train into town, and pick a bale o' filing every day, but I don't get paid. So one of the people in my department kind of sympathized and sent word down to HR about their starving intern: lucky me, there was an opening in security for a petting bank attendant.

It's actually a pretty sweet gig, all told. They let me set my work schedule around my courseload, and mostly I just have to stand around and look official. It's pretty fun flirting with the young moms who bring their kids in, and I like watching all the little squirts run their chubby hands through the bins of small bills and riffle the bundles of twenties. Not to get all sappy on you, but - don't barf!- there's something special about the way a kid's face lights up when they're squealing with glee and flapping a couple of crisp new hundreds.

Once in a while an adult will come in. We get mostly the elderly for some reason. I remember one old guy standing by the quarter trough picking up handfuls of change and slowly letting the coins run through his fingers, over and over again, the same exact motion, like he was meditating. I think he liked the sound or something. Anyway, it was kinda weird, and I'm glad he only came in once.

So here's the stress part: Today, this little boy, like maybe four, is visiting with his mom, and they're doing the rounds, when the kid starts getting really attached to this pack of twenties. He's like hugging them and taking off the band and fanning them out, and laying all the bills out, then stacking them up again and putting the band back on, the whole works. So finally his mom is like: "time to go", and he's like little mister whiny voice: "mommy I wannit". So he stars to get fussy, and his mom's trying to reason with him, all cooing and caresses, like: "no honey, this money lives at the bank, we can come back and visit it later".

But this kid ain't having none of it. He fires off a couple more preliminary "I wannit"s, then he sort of stops and this ominous calm comes over him, like the way the air goes still before a frickin' humdinger of a thunderstorm kicks out. All of a sudden, the kid goes into full fetal position, clutching the twenties to himself, lying there balled up on the floor, and just GOES OFF. It was blood curdling, the sound this kid was making, something like: UUUUUAAAAAWWWWWWEEEEEAAAAUUUUGGGGGHHH!!!! Like he was suffering from cancer, kidneystones, migranes, and a compound fracture all at once. Of couse his mom's like smiling and trying to calm the boy down, but she's starting to look pretty strained. I mean, It was humiliating just having to watch this kid. If I had been his parent, I think I would have just turned around, run out of the bank, and started a new life somewhere far, far away.

Well by now most of the bank staff is trying to intervene, so now you have this hysterical little kid with all these adults huddling around him, screaming his ass off. If you just walked in and saw us you probably would have thought we were skinning him alive, the way he was wailing. So the longest five goddamn minutes of my life go by, and finally junior runs out of steam. He gives up the twenties, and gets up, sniffling, and wiping his eyes, and we're all like congratulating him on being so "grown up", because we're too relieved that he finally shut up to be pissed off at the little punk. Off toddles the boy, hand in hand with mom. The last glimpse I got of her face, she had this expression like she'd stayed up all night in a damp foxhole with artillery shells detonating all round her. Weird too: seemed like a pretty well off lady, so it's not as if the kid had never seen money before. In fact, the poor kids are always really well behaved, almost reverential the way they stroke the fifties and hundreds.

So that's it. I got home and drank the last two beers and seriously considered getting a vasectomy, har har. Anyway, I have to go in for my internship tomorrow, then I have marketing class in the afternoon so maybe we can get together after that. Let me know what your schedule's like. Later.