small animals

I am so nervous, I am nervous every week. I don't have music to listen to or books to read. Just the thoughts in my head and the churning guts in my stomach. I get on the streetcar, and notice a little red headed boy, talking loudly to the woman in front of him. He seems really intelligent, but at first I feel annoyed by him. Maybe its because he is so happy. Maybe its because he is a child; free and without obligation. He's eloquent in the way he speaks, and I think at least once he used a word I didn't know the meaning for. The woman in front of him isn't his mother, but I think a few of the other kids are hers. I can't see her face because she is looking at all the children; talking to them but mostly just listening to them.
"Now remember, guys...We can't take all of them."
I wonder if they are going to the Humane Society. We are headed in that direction, after all. I reminisce the utter excitement of going to pick up a new pet. I seem to remember each time so vividly; especially the day my mom told us we were getting a puppy. I remember going to visit him each week before we could take him home because we were so young. I remember the breeders choosing to give them away for free because they loved them so much they couldn't fathom profiting from them. I remember the Siamese kittens when I was five. Ping and Pong. I remember when Ping died she was five. I remember when Pong died. He was twenty. I remember Pong on the day Ping died; I could see in his eyes he was looking for her. He was so lethargic. I remember all of their entries into my life, I remember all of their exits. I think I always will.
"We have to um, look for the smaller ones; the ones that um, look like they need special care!" Says the red-headed boy.
"We can't get anything that look like they are going to have babies," says the woman, "we don't want to be overloaded with hamsters."
I remember the hamsters too.
And the degus. They had babies once, and then their babies had babies. Once, I remember the mother eating one of the babies. I tried to forget that.
"We can't have our place smelling like a zoo," she says, her arm around the girl beside her.
"Sooner or later, you will start to noice a smell, and once you live with that smell you don't smell it anymore. It takes somebody else coming into your house and saying, 'Ew...do you have animals?' You know, there aren't too many moms who would dedicate their lives to housing a hamster colony."
The kids giggle and I start to take note about how nice this woman seems to be. She is so genuinely interested in what each child has to say. That, and she obviously has dedicated her life to a hamster colony for children. The red-headed boy starts to talk about the commercials he's been in.
"Why did you stop doing commercials?" The woman asks, "didn't you like it?
"I did, yeah," says the boy, his words seem rehearsed, like he's in an interview. "But um, it really interrupts your um, daily.....routine?"
"Oh, yes. That's true," she responds, "but you know there are schools here in Toronto that help out kids that are involved in acting, and sports too. Kids that need flexible schedules."
The red-headed boy doesn't seem very interested, and I figure the reason he isn't acting anymore has very little to do with the busy schedule. I understood that feeling. He asked if the school was a "sleep-over school".
The day before my entrance into Senior Kindergarten, I asked my mom if the school was going to make me stay over night. My mom laughed and assured me they wouldn't, but I didn't believe her. I was so afraid to stay over anywhere. I didn't stay away from home without my parents until I was 13. By the time I was 19 it seemed like I wanted to stay anywhere else.
The woman has such a soothing voice, so calm, so maternal. It makes me miss my mom. She assures the boy that its not a sleep-over school.
"and another thing with acting? is um, that it takes up so much of your time and you um, spend all this time trying for an audition and um, you might not even get that----"
"How many stops?" a girl interrupts, the first time I've heard her speak.
"The next one is Caroll, I think? Then we're the one after that!"
They're getting off the streetcar and the red-headed boy asks the girl if she knows what a factorial is.
I don't, I think to myself, and then the boy starts yelling out numbers so I know at the very least it has to do with math, my first inkling.
The girl keeps paraphrasing. I miss being a kid. I remember being five years old and pretending to have homework. I always felt too old for my age but now I feel so young.
I can hear the boy continue his explanation outside the streetcar and I quietly say goodbye to them.

It's quiet now. I'm nervous again.