Monologue

The worst is the manager. On the first day he called me “Red” in that way they always do. I told him that that was my brother’s nickname, not mine. My name is Kay, I said. He laughed, and touched me shoulders, and neck. He was looking at my backside. I like them feisty, he said. That’s why Reds are my favorite. I didn’t say a word, because I had only just started. I can’t just quit a job, you understand. I can’t quit when I have just began. I may not have a lot of ambition, but I am stubborn as anything.

Maybe the manager was right about redheads, I don’t know. I only know myself.

I am wretched at this job, I really am. I can’t type fast enough for them. My shorthand is good enough, but I type slow and steady, and that isn’t any good. I can be popular and funny, I can be the life of a party. I don’t know if I can work. I have to work. I am one of the older children, so I have to work now, instead of go to school. Does anybody care about orphans at 22? I’m too old to be an Oliver Twist, object of pity. But I am too young for it to be fair.
Some of the men at the store don’t leer. Maybe red head and freckles isn’t their type. They don’t leer, but they talk down. They talk slowly to me, explaining what I did wrong in the worst sort of kind voices. I think, just because I don’t type fast enough for your liking, doesn’t mean I am slow in the head. I know I am smart. I did well at Pitt in my three years. I laughed, and flirted with boys plenty. Just like before. But I learned a lot of things, interesting things, maybe useful things. If I knew what I wanted to do with them.
I didn’t want to be a teacher or a nurse. I don’t particularly want to be a secretary, but I am good at shorthand. That might be my only money-making talent. I guess you could say I don’t have any ambition. No specific goal for my life. I went to college because father wanted me to. It would have been ungrateful to refuse. Lord knows what else I would have done. Stayed in Welland, I suppose. Maybe gotten a job like this one
I might marry and have children, of course. Never men like these, though. The men at the store don’t deserve me. Even if they cared to have me, they wouldn’t deserve me. I am not a child or a pinup. It’s been a long time since I felt like a human woman. At Pitt and back in Welland, the boys could be pals. We would laugh and flirt, but they could look me in the face.

The worst is the manager. Today he called me Red in that way the always do. Then he patted my backside. I wanted to slap him, but I can’t quite. It’s only been a few weeks. I may not have ambition, but I am stubborn as anything.

Child soldiers

I haven’t the slightest idea what should be done about child soldiers. Clearly, the worst of it is going on in Africa, and sometimes it seems like the more affluent places try to help Africa, the less it works. Not for any reason except for the assholes in charge, who until they are out of the way, will always be standing between the people who need help. And these are the people who take money and food for the intended recipients. People’s charity is wasted, and they just end up helping the last people they wish they were helping.

Why is this problem important? It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a sociopath that if 250,000 children are being used as cannon fodder in twenty different countries, it’s a problem. We’re supposed to care when we hear about horrible things happening to people, especially children. It’s in our nature. However, it’s a long way from caring to doing something about it. I haven’t done anything about it, because I don’t know what to do, and because my silly life is a great distraction.

It feels vaguely pertinent that I was watching “Oliver!” earlier today. That’s a shiny version of a book about horrible poverty, and the Charles Dickens grimness is lightened by musical numbers. Still, the theme is one little boy, innocent (to say nothing of the other boys in Fagin’s gang, who have already lost their innocence) who is being pulled back and forth and being exploited by adults. Some of whom were exploited in their own lives, when they were young.
Regardless of political difference and argument, people should feel that there is something fearfully wrong with that. With Dickens days it was poverty, and with these current conflicts in Africa, it’s poverty and warfare. But most of all it’s people who can justify the horrors that they do to other people – smaller, weaker people, who should be protected by them, or at the very least, left alone and in peace.