Work - Cute Kid

Okay. I think the site has calmed down now, and I got my Poll and my Guestbook page back up and running. Time for a little thing that happened today.
They have made some territory changes to all the routes in the town I deliver mail in. My route is now a little larger than it was last week. Hurray.
This means I am delivering mail in new neighborhoods that are close to what is left of my old route. I'm seeing new people and meeting new customers. We've had the new set-up for three days now, and I'm figuring it out.  So today, I got to a street close to the end of my route and there was a little family out on it. It's a short dead end street that I got from another carrier's route, and I'll call that carrier D-. The family consisted of a mom and her son and daughter, about four and six, respectively. The kids were playing in front of the house and the mom was keeping a dutiful eye on them. As I rounded the corner, sorting the mail as I walked, the boy ran up to me, his sister and mother trailing behind.
"Are you our new mailman?"
"Yep."
"What's your name?"
"My name's Rob."
The mother was smiling at this interaction her son was having, looking at him fondly as she approached.
"My name's A-."
"Well, it's nice to meet you A-."
"I wish D- was still our mailman."
I laughed. I looked at mom, but she suddenly seemed to find something about the other end of the street absolutely fascinating, and she was staring at it just as hard as she could. I looked at A-.
"Well, D- is a great mailman."
"Yeah. I wish he was still our mailman. Why are you our mailman now?"
"I'm not actually sure, A-. Because my boss told me to, I guess."
"Yeah. D- was a great mailman. He was fun. I liked him a lot. I wish he was still our mailman."
I looked at mom again. She was walking alongside of us, but she wasn't looking at me. She had a serious thousand yard stare going at the house we were walking toward.
"I wish mailmen would stay in one place until they were ready to quit."
"That would be nice, yes."
"The we would still have D-."
Mom's jaw muscles were standing out, and her focus on the house down the street was so great I looked more closely at it to see if it was starting to smolder.
Not yet, but it was probably a close thing.
"I get it, A-. "
Mom decided she had had enough of walking with us, so she detoured to her front porch while A- followed me from house to house. Thank God there were only 4 houses on that part of the street. At each one I learned something new about the wonderful D-.
"D- used to bring me library books."
"That's nice."
"Sometimes D- brought packages for us."
"I'll bet he did."
"D- used to let me walk with him like this all the time."
"What fun."
I finished the street and was walking on to the next street, but I stopped to say goodbye to A-. Mom was still standing by her porch, in some sort of Zen trance, contemplating the state of existence of her dryer sheets or something.
"A-? I'll tell you what. I'll keep an eye out for library stuff that comes this way, and get it right to you, Okay? Packages too, alright? You don't have to worry about it."
"Okay."
He was smiling. That was something, wasn't it? Progress? Was I going to come out of this as the okay new mailman?
Then the smile faded.
"But you're not D-."
He turned and walked away.

Cute kid.