Easily shocked
I fear I may be lacking in a quality that I don't know exactly how to describe, depravity, or at least, acquaintancy with depravity, perhaps. Irina has celebrated her birthday today -- and a nice day was had by all, more of that anon -- but in preparation for the grand day, our daughters needed to buy some birthday presents.
In our family it is customary to subsidize the buying of presents by children to a certain extent: they don't have to dip into their pocket money to any great extent on these occasions. So I pressed a tenner into Naomi's hands when Irina wasn't looking, and they resolved to mount an expedition to town the Tuesday after that.
And that Tuesday night, when I came home, Naomi told me they had to curtail their spending after all. Why? Well, this is why...
They assembled in front of a certain shop to divide their loot, and a freak gust of wind tore the tenner from Naomi's hands and deposited it in front of a young man.
Who promptly picked it up, pocketed it, grinned at my daughters, and made tracks.
So, here I'm left with this existential question: how can anyone who presumably lays claim to membership of the human race nobble ten quid from three prepubescent girls? And laugh while doing so? I know, in the abstract, that there are people who do worse than that, but, well, that doesn't mean that this isn't so far beyond the pale that I cannot grasp even the first principles of it...
Fortunately, the kids weren't any too wrought up, and a nice Chaplin tonight (accompanied by four kinds of pasties) did much to restore domestic tranquility. Note to self: The Circus by Chaplin is very funny, but the ending is sad, and the movie adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby is even more brutal than the book, and not suitable for a young audience, or even for an adult audience that doesn't like lovingly depicted cruelty. And that is maybe why I don't understand that blasted thief who stole my my daughters' tenner either.
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