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Dad with toddler in arms walks over.
I do the usual “Hello, welcome to XXX!” and hand them a brochure.
The dad whispers something into the child’s ear.
The child reaches out and grabs the brochure.
Dad whispers something else.
Child says to me, “Hello.”
I respond in kind, “Hello!”
Dad whispers again.
Child goes, “Bye bye.”
I wave, “Bye bye!”
They walk off.
Colleague and I exchange quizzical looks.
* * * * *
Can’t do sales. And visitor services. At the end of a 6-hour shift, I just feel like slipping into some forgotten cave somewhere to recuperate. It takes me a few minutes to ‘learn the ropes’ and get myself up to speed with the events of the day, one hour to stumble around and make myself look like an idiot by turning to one of the ‘regulars’ whenever a difficult question is posed by a visitor, a couple of hours to work my Extroversion out of its shell, an hour for it to reach its peak performance period, the one hour during which I’d start to sound like a pro, and then after that, fatigue sets in and the ambient furniture music (Kevin Kern, I recognised it as) (that one CD has been on re-loop the whole day) lures a tired brain into auto-pilot. Funny thing is, I do enjoy it when the E has taken charge…
* * * * *
The Butterfly Garden was one of the more popular attractions, with visitors forming queues outside its entrance for a ‘tour’ in the aviary-style gardens that wouldn’t last past 10 minutes. Many were enthralled by the flying beauties, and there were all manner of poses with all models of camera-phones and cameras in there. My sis happened to be one of the visitors, and one of the Butterfly Garden staff attempted to enthuse some interest by asking her “do you know how caterpillars become butterflies?”.
At this point, I should mention that my sister is perhaps one of the most scientifically-adept youngsters of her age I have ever known, and has manage to not only sit through a rather technical talk by fly expert Patrick Grootaert but also formed a few educated questions and comments during the process. The topic of lepidopteran metamorphosis thus, would be to her as elementary as which alphabet comes before ‘B’.
From what I heard (from my parents, who recounted the story), my sis gave the poor staff a blank ‘duh’ look and her answer, loaded with sarcasm: “By magic.”