I took a break from crafting today so that I could go to the craft store and buy some supplies for yet more crafting. There will be no break for the next few months here since I just ponied up the cash for 2 booth fees for November shows, in addition to the cash I’ve dropped on craft supplies, boxes, bags, display stands, a cash box, and getting my logo digitized by my friend the professional. It’s safe to say that I may not recover my fees this holiday season, but it’s a good start.

So as I was driving all over the county looking for a very specific carrot shaped button, (because I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $3.99 in shipping for a button that weighs less than an ounce and costs $1.40) I found myself at Michael’s to pick up some treat bags for my bath bombs. A minute later, some angry harpy of a land whale, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and call her a woman, came crashing through the aisle, knocking things off shelves and stepping on my foot in her mad cow stampede for the cake decorating supplies, dragging her daughter along for the feeding frenzy. As her daughter bent down to pick up a cake pan she knocked over, she looked at my manicured toes, pointed, and said “Ooh! Pretty!” I smiled and thanked her, and went off in search of beads, but not before her hog beast relation snorted and glared at me.

Ooh! Pretty!

A few minutes later, the hog beast thundered by the bead aisle with an armful of candy melts and told her daughter to “Make it quick! I’m checking out and I will leave without you!” So her daughter walked to the display of crystal beads and struggled to reach a packet on the top row before I got one down for her. She gave me a cute, shy little smile and said thank you, and ran to go catch up with mommy fattest.

Before she got to the end of the aisle, though, she turned around, looked up at me and said, “I like your toenails, and I want mine to look like that. But mommy said I’m wrong because only hookers have toenails like that.”

Aha. Sudden insight into mad cow’s bruised psyche. Well I’m not about to let some bitter old cunt badger warp this still sweet little girl without at least giving the poor kid some tools to help fight her off. So I told her, “I like you. You seem like a smart kid and I think you’re old enough and smart enough to know exactly what you do and don’t like. You stick to your guns and like anything you want, because kids who believe what other people tell them to grow up into angry, trollish hose beasts, and no one likes a hose beast.”

She gave me that cute tinkling little laugh that little girls have before she skipped off to the check out line. I ended up a few places behind them in line a minute later when the little girl was looking at some ornaments in the bargain bins. She held one of them up to her mom and said, “I like this sparkly one. It’s like a fairy!” Her mom sneered at her, snatched it out of her hand and threw it back in the bin. “Well you don’t have wings and the only other people who like sparkles are trashy women, so forget it!”

And there unfolded the greatest thing that I have ever seen in all my 30 years. There in the middle of 20 spectators, this little girl balled up her fists, stood up straight and tall, stomped her foot and yelled, “I am smart enough and old enough to know what I like without you telling me I’m wrong! Keep your opinion to yourself you angry old troll beast!”

And then I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. That kid’s going to be just fine.