The Man's busy season has started. Festivals, fairs, wine tastings and parties galore coming up in the next few months. Saturday he played in Cambridge, MD at a blues festival. We had attended this last year, and despite the long drive, it's not a bad gig. They only play for slightly over an hour, it's not incredibly crowded, and there's a courtesy tent for the band (and family) behind the stage.
Saturday was gorgeous- 80 degrees and sunny, without the typical Maryland humidity. SB and I chose a spot and settled down. We didn't even really care that we put the blanket down on what was probably the only spot on the entire field that was wet. Someone must have emptied a cooler or several camel bladders on the spot just before we got there.
Just as we settled in, a little girl about SB's age came up to us and plopped herself down on SB's princess chair, which was set up on our blanket. She put one leg over the arm of the chair and sat there eating a slice of pizza. SB and I looked at each other in surprise then SB started to cry, saying that was her chair and she wanted to sit in it.
I looked around for the girl's mom, but didn't see anyone anywhere that seemed to be a parent whose child was on my blanket. I tried to calm SB down by telling her she wasn't sitting in the chair and that she should share it. But secretly, I kind of got why she was upset.
Then the little girl reached down and took one of SB's toys that we had brought to keep her occupied. This set SB into a whole new wave of tears. This time I told the little girl that SB was playing with that and could she please give it back. She stared at me for a full minute then threw it at SB.
Yes, she threw my child's toy at her.
TB came up to us at this time to see if we needed anything and saw SB in tears. I explained this girl was sitting in her chair and playing with her toys then throwing them at her, and I didn't know who she belonged to. He asked her to get up so they could go find her mommy or whoever she was there with, but she just sat there. She wouldn't budge. TB wasn't about to pick her up and carry her off to find her family, not in this day and age, so he just left to go get ready to play.
SB was still whining about her chair, so finally I told the girl that SB had brought this chair so she could sit on it, and she really wanted to so could she please get up. Finally, she got up and left. I watched her go a few blankets up and sit in a lawn chair that I had seen an old lady occupying a few minutes before. Something told me she was chair squatting again. But not my chair, not my concern.
This girl came and went a few times. Sometimes she would sit on the princess chair and sometimes she would try to go through my bag. I kept asking her where her family was and she kept ignoring me. On one particularly long visit, she and SB were playing with SB's bubble blowing stuff, and SB asked the girl about 20 times (no joke0 kids are persistent) what her name was. But she refused to answer. I was nervous about her playing with the bubble toys because some of them require you to put your mouth up to the toy and, not knowing this girl, I didn't want them sharing. One by one I took those toys away.
After the bubble visit, once the girl had gone, SB announced she was hungry. I pulled out the crackers, cheese and turkey I had brought for her and immediately the girl appeared. She said she was hungry.
There was no way I was sharing food with this girl, for several reasons. First off, she was obviously not interested in being friends with SB, she was only coming to play with her toys and sit in her chair. Secondly, I didn't know this girl from Adam and I wasn't about to give her food, risking her having an allergic reaction, without a parent to confirm it was ok first.
So I stood my ground. I told her no, if she wanted food she needed to get it from her mom. She said she didn't want her mom's food, but she was hungry. I told her she was eating pizza when we first saw her so she couldn't be too hungry. But either way, we only brought enough food for SB and myself, so she needed to go ask her mom for some food.
Then she tried to sit in my lap. This was too much for me. I'm very lovey with SB but I'm not touchy-feely with other kids. At all. Especially bratty vagrant kids whose parents let them run around unattended at festivals.
So I pushed her off my lap. I said that I didn't know her, and that I didn't know if her mother would want her sitting in a stranger's lap.
Just at that moment, I looked up and saw another girl, about 7 or 8 years old, standing at the edge of our blanket. She didn't say anything but just stared at me. I was really starting to get creeped out with all these freaky kids being attracted to our blanket.
Eventually I found out that this was Vagrant Girl's sister. Still no hint of parents, mind you. Vagrant Girl started putting her shoes on (which had somehow appeared in front of our blanket- maybe Vagrant Sister brought them? VG had been barefoot the entire time I saw her). I told her she was putting them on the wrong feet and she ignored me. Oh well.
VS announced that she would be right back and left. VG finished putting on her shoes, then left a minute later. I saw her wandering around some other blankets, and at one point, watched a mom wrestle a bottle of apple juice away from her to give to her own son. Then I never saw her again.
Thankfully.
Although a little while later, like maybe a half hour, VS reappeared and asked where VG had gone. I told her I had no idea, I hadn't seen her for a good half hour.
Crazy stuff. I'm the kind of person who, at these festivals, likes to be left alone. I'll interact with the people next to me to tell them their baby is cute or warn them that their dog wrangled off the leash and is humping the bass player's leg. And I'm all for SB making friends with kids her age and running around and playing with them. But VG was too much for me.
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