Welfareloser's Blog

okay, so a while back, spazmonkey went in for labmonkey session #1, a language evaluation in preparation for a three-playdate study on how kids make friends. why do i torture him so? because mommy gets $20 every time he goes in for an hour, AND free babysitting for his two brothers, to boot. the boy is takin one for the team, and we all appreciate it.

okay, so we walk into the building and meet the kid spazmonkey will be playing with for three consecutive thursdays. his name is trogboy, and trogboy is about as uninteresting, unfun, disinterested, and unanimated as any kid i’ve ever seen. i politely ask trogboy’s mom if he’s sick, and she’s surprised by the question. the kid isn’t bored, or tired, or shy, or nervous, and he isn’t sick… he’s just… existing. as far as he’s concerned, breathing is taxing enough, and he really doesn’t feel like looking around the room at all the toys, let alone picking any of them up to actually play. i wonder if maybe he just doesn’t know what to do with himself without a tv – if that’s the case, he isn’t the least bit *disturbed* by the lack of tv.

after one token overture (pointing at him, yelling “BOY!”, and then grabbing a fireman axe to show him,) that gets no reaction from trogboy whatsoever, spazmonkey picks up on trogboy’s utter lack of entertainment value immediately and wants nothing to do with him. so he ran around and played with the toys for twenty minutes, until the child psych grad student came in to clean up the toys and bring out the second set of toys… a table, two chairs, *one* playdoh ice cream truck, and *one* lump of playdoh. yeah. can we see where this is going? “let’s give two three-year-olds one toy, and see if they start crying before or after they beat the crap out of each other!” worthy question, and i’m sure parenting magazines across the country will beathlessly report the stunning results of the study for the betterment of parents everywhere.

spazmonkey was busy dancing around the room while trogboy dutifully sat down in the chair provided him, so trogboy – in a stunning display of initiative – puts his hand on the playdoh and dragged it over in front of him first. the moms were given instructions NOT TO INTERACT with the children at all, unless they were about to do something dangerous. i figure that’d be about now. spazmonkey sits down in his chair, looks down at the blank spot of table in front of him, then looks up at the grad student and asks, “where my pwaydoh?” the grad student wisely beats ass out of there.

spazmonkey turns to trogboy, who is still sitting there with his hand on the playdoh. he isn’t playing with it. he isn’t guarding it. he’s just… coexisting with it. “pwaydoh?” spazmonkey asks. trogboy doesn’t even turn toward the sound of his voice. again, i don’t get the impression that he’s studiously ignoring the boy – little kids are not slick, and they’re not subtle. if the request had registered and trogboy had decided to deny that request, he would have hunched protectively over the playdoh, stolen glances at spazmonkey, maybe even made a big show of playing with it. nope. nothin. trogboy abides.

“pwaydoh?” this time spazmonkey leans in and says it a little louder. nothin. “PWAYDOH?” spazmonkey was getting a bit frantic now, and holds his hand out by way of politely suggesting that trogboy GIVE UP SOME OF THE DAMN PLAYDOH. i figure this is about to get real ugly, but i could not have been prouder (or more surprised) by the fact that spazmonkey never reeached over and just grabbed the playdoh. playdoh is his favorite toy, period. he had just had a meltdown when we walked into the study and i had to take away the lump of playdoh he had brought in with him – and the grad student had promised him he would get more playdoh later. and there it was… and he wasn’t going to take it away from another kid, period. wow. i guess all that parenting crap really does work!

so spazmonkey sits there and cries, wailing “pwaaaaaaaaay-doooooohhhhh!” oh, lord did i feel like a turd for pimping him out for $20. it sucked. then, miraculously, after a full five minutes of this, trogboy temporarily shambles to life, rolling his oversized head around to look at spazmonkey (this may have even been a voluntary motion, though it’s impossible to say for sure.) “you wan playdoh?” he asks. he squeezes off a lump of it, and drops it in front of spazmonkey. then his eyes dim again, and he reverts to staring blankly at the wall with one hand resting on his lump of playdoh.

“pwaydoh! yes!” spazmonkey giggles. “wook, a wockmonster!” he shouts. trogboy, having expended all the effort he had for the day, doesn’t look around. “ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!” spazmonkey smashes his rockmonster, checking for a reaction from his purported playmate. “wook, boy, wook! a diraffe!” spazmonkey’s penis-on-four-legs also fails to excite, so he waves it in front of trogboy’s face. trogboy briefly reanimates and makes a swipe for the playdoh. spazmonkey grabs it back, lunges at the boy’s face and yells “NO NO NOT MY PWAYDOH DATS MINE YOUR PWAYDOH WIGHT DERE ROOOAAAWWWWRRRRR!” the roar actually elicits a momentary wide-eyed expression that might have even been strong enough to call “surprise,” and trogboy backs away and falls out of his chair onto the floor. he sits there for a moment, and i wonder if he’s going to bother to get up at all. he eventually does, plopping himself slowly back into his chair, and plopping his hand back onto his lump of playdoh. “you okay boy?” asks spazmonkey. the boy doesn’t respond. spazmonkey grunts and goes to work making an ice cream cone. trogboy doesn’t move again until the play session was over and his mom instructed him to leave the room.

so the last 15 minutes of the session involve just spazmonkey and the grad student, who asks the boy a bunch of questions about emotions. (trogboy was in another room with a different grad student, presumeably not answering the same questions from a different grad student.)

now, if you remember labmonkey session #1, spazmonkey took great delight in fucking with this poor grad student. that was six months ago, but spazmonkey quickly remembered how easy and fun it was to fuck with this poor guy. first, the guy gives him a bag of rainbow goldfish crackers and a juice box, then he lays out four felt faces with different expressions on them: happy, sad, scared and angry. before even being asked, spazmonkey takes a break from lining up his crackers in color order and blowing bubbles in his juicebox to delare “HAPPY! ANGWY! SCARED! SAD HE’S CWYING GOT A OWIE ON HIS FACE!” the grad student stops looking nervous and says, “wow, that’s really good! i’ve never had a kid who could just name all four of them right out of the gate like that!” yeah. i think the poor guy thought that meant the reast of the session was going to go well.

then the grad student pulls out two puppets with expressionless faces. he explains that one is justin, and one is justin’s sister, amy. he explains that he’s going to tell some stories about justin and amy, and he wants spazmonkey to tell him how justin feels after each story. spazmonkey looks at him blankly. so, the grad student starts telling the first story:

JUSTIN: hi amy!
AMY: hi justin! would you like some ice cream?
JUSTIN: oh, yummy, ice cream! i love ice cream, thank you! yay, ice cream!

“so, how do you think justin feels?” asks the grad student, gesturing at the line of four felt faces on the table. spazmonkey looks blankly at the guy. “can you pick one face, to show how justin feels when his sister shares ice cream with him?” he asks hopefully. spazmonkey drops out of his chair and makes a big show of marching around the table, looking under and over it, punctuating his search with the occasional indignant “HUH?” when he makes it back around to his chair, he plops down, looks at the grad student, and declares, “DERE’S NO ICE CWEAM.” “oh… kay… but how would he feel if he DID have some ice cr-” “DERE’S NO ICE CWEAM HERE!” after a couple more exchanges, the grad student puts a slash in the box on the form on his clipboard, and skips to the next story, in which amy pushes justin down and makes him cry.

now, the grad student doesn’t notice this, but i do – spazmonkey’s eyes are drawn to the clipboard, and the boy’s expression is utter, naked glee when he realizes that this guy is writing down his responses. “so, how do you you think justin felt when his sister pushed him down?” asks the grad student, throwing in some boo-hoo noises and having the puppet rub at his eyes for good measure. spazmonkey, with a shit-eating grin, carefully lines up the four faces, saying “hmmmmmmmmmmmm! how coud he possibwy feeeeeeeel?” if i hadn’t been instructed not to interfere, i would have already bopped the kid on the back of the head and told him to quit fucking with the poor guy, but i was honor-bound (by the promise of $20, that is) to do nothing. “coud he be saaaaaaaaaaaaad?” he holds up the sad face and looks at the grad student, waits until the guy is writing down the response, and then yells “OR IS HE SCAAAAAAAAARED?” the little turd giggles when the guy scribbles out his first response to write in the second one. “NO NO NO NO WAIT! DUSDIN IS SAD!” he looks at the guy, who has paused his pen above the paper, wiseley waiting to see if this is the final answer. jabbing his finger at the paper, spazmonkey commands, “WITE DAT DOWN!”

for the last two stories, spazmonkey just ignores the guy, and makes up his own stories using the four emotion faces, yielding exactly zero useable answers.

yep! we’ll see him again next week.