Words for My Enjoyment

Kasey (Age 4) Hates Me

November 6th, 2006

You may remember my goal last week to be the best Halloween candy giver ever.

The actual night of Halloween, I must say, was a glorious experience. I gave out candy by the handful, sometimes giving children the choice of “picking their own.” I was met with smiling faces, giddy parents (glad I wasn’t one of those guys from Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,”) and while I didn’t reach my goal of hangin’ with the local teenaged hoodlums, I felt that my interpersonal relationships with neighborhood children had reached a satisfactory level of perfection.

That is until I found out that Kasey (age 4) hates me.

Kasey lives just down the street from me in a 2,500 square foot, two-story home with a set of loving parents and a younger sibling as well. Last year when Kasey was three, she went trick or treating as a ballerina. Honestly, with her pink frilly outfit and her twirling motions, she lept into the hearts of neighborhood homeowners everywhere. I think I may have even given her a king size Butterfinger in ‘05.

This year, Kasey came around dressed as Dora the Explorer with the whole Dora backpack, a butterfly net slung over her right shoulder, some phrases in Espanol (Dios Mio!) and an open bag ready to receive some of the bestest candy she had ever laid her eyes on. This year, as I was unable to give her anything less than a king size Butterfinger (it’s the law of candy giving, I’m sorry to say…much like workplace bonuses that must at least match the previous years’ level of generosity), I handed over an even better bit of candy: the King Size Kit Kat.

If you’ve ever seen a King Size Kit Kat, you know why I’m making such a big deal about it.

While a king size Butterfinger (king size in lowercase because it’s really not so king sized) is a little bit bigger than a normal sized Butterfinger, the King Size Kit Kat (KsKK, for short) is like having four Kit Kats in your possession. All other king size candies are just double the size of a normal candy bar. But KsKK? Watch out. It’s hyper in a paper wrapper, ready for easy consumption.

So that’s what I gave Kasey.

This morning, I’m walking my dog around my neighborhood when I go past Kasey’s family’s house. Her father is sitting outside blocking off his newly-seeded lawn when he looks up to me and says nothing. I say hello to my good neighbor and he doesn’t even respond. So I stop. And ask him if he’s okay. And that’s when he says:

“Why don’t you ask me how Kasey is instead.”

How Kasey is? Why would I ask you how your daughter is? First of all, not only does that immediately make me look like I DO belong on a Dateline NBC hidden camera special, but it’s just plain weird. But I can’t quite figure out what the deal is so I ask him, well, what’s the deal? He stands up, almost whispering to me and he says:

“You gave Kasey a King Size Kit Kat.”

Uh huh? And? Yes, I gave her probably the biggest, most king-sized candy bar created in this century! I handed over a candy bar that costs like 99 cents and gave it solely to her. Yes, I told him — I did give your four year old daughter the holy grail of King Sized candy. And what’s so wrong with that? Well, he has an answer for everything and so he doesn’t delay in telling me that last year I gave her a king size Butterfinger and this year I didn’t give her the same king size Butterfinger but instead gave her a candy that’s pretty much “all wafer and no substance” and I’m like did Kasey say that or are you putting words into her mouth?

I suggested at that point (since her father wasn’t really allowing me to fully explore the idiocy of it all) that he fetch Kasey and we could talk this thing out. He’s not game. I suggest he just explain to her that I hardly gave out any king size candy in the first place. Kasey doesn’t care, he tells me, without even walking to the screen door to ask her. What am I supposed to do here, then, I ask — I mean, what’s the real deal here?

“Kasey hates you,” he tells me. Straight out. A four year old kid hates me. For giving her a different kind of king size candy than the previous year. “She was just really disappointed that you gave her that and you’re going to have to give her some time for her to get over it and forget that it happened.”

Seriously?

Whoever said children are so adorable because they just speak their mind and don’t fuss with real-world manners and cultural stereotypes was probably never at the opposite end of the hatred stick, being wielded by a four year old private-school attending, Dora the explorer backpack wearing pre-adolescent neighborhood Evita Peron like I was.

And still, some of you are like, “Pauly, what the H! Why do you care? Let it go.”

The problem is this. My neighborhood is filled with children. And there’s like this caste system that’s formed here right under the city planners without anyone doing a thing to stop it. Kasey just happens to be one of the higher-up, more well-respected four year olds out of the crew here — which happens to be made up of about twenty-five kids all aged between three and seven. And if one of the influential kids doesn’t like you, the rest of the kids aren’t going to like you and then when they’re walking past your house around three o’clock after schools over they’re going to make such unlikability known by walking all over your grass, on your rose bushes, throwing empty Doritos bags on your lawn, pushing over your garbage pails, mistakenly knocking or scratching your automobile… And so on and so on.

That being said, I’m still in the doghouse when it comes to Kasey.

I tried walking past her house later in the day to see if she was going to be playing outside with her friends and family where I figured I could just mend the situation by giving her a brand new king size Butterfinger, but she wasn’t out. I even tried calling the house to see if she’d answer at which point I could fix things…but it went right to voice mail. And now, on the first school day after the weekend and last week’s Halloween situation, I find myself in a precarious situation — not knowing how things will turn out for me, now being hated by Kasey, age four.

See what happens when you try to be generous?

See?

Posted under Halloween, King Size Candy, Neighborhood Politics, People Who Hate Me, Pre-Adolescent Caste Systems. |