The Kids, they said. Atqasuk is great except for The Kids.

Kids and I are not exactly strangers after two summers of day care and years of VBS crafts. Plus, I usually identify with the mentality. I didn’t care about getting older anymore after I turned eleven and had a mini-mid-life crisis at fifteen, so I am not uncomfortable with kids.

Kids are not the same as babies.

In any case, how bad could it be, right? The looks of apprehension on the faces of my experienced coworkers didn’t scare me, nor did the unconvincing “it’s not that bad”s they used to quickly amend the horror stories. So all the five-to-ten-year-old boys in the little town of Atqasuk (Population: 350ish) are out of school for the summer and have nothing to do all day. So they have free rein in the town and can get around easily on all manner of bikes and ATVs. So they’re up from noon to six a.m. So their parents don’t care what they do (and have yet to make an appearance… at all). So they chase the truck the second we come into town and have us surrounded before the front door is unlocked. So what?

We’re kind of hiding from them today, so they keep coming up and banging on the house. I can’t always tell the difference between the banging to get in and the banging that is a result of the rocks-and-bats game that is going on outside, but we covered up the windows as both a light and a children preventative measure.

They really aren’t that bad, but after a field day they are not ideal companions. Their favorite things about us so far are our radios, which make the most delightful beeping noises, and the gummy bears that Jeremy used today to bribe them to stay away. I found three of them in my right boot this morning. Gummy bears, not kids. We have yet to determine if this was a deliberate attack or a random act of mindless mischief.

One of the cleverer ones noticed my eyes right away and tried unsuccessfully to point out the peculiarity to the others. He had a long line of questioning for me, but refreshingly he stayed away from the “was your mom on crack when you were born?” route. I believe his name to be Edward.

So the gummy bear situation really could have been a hate crime. Maybe they have something against heterochromia. They do have something against white people, or their parents do, based on the colorful Inupiat racial slur their parents taught them. Of course, when they used it last year my coworkers had no idea what it meant until another white person told them, which I think is a quintessential example of the inanity of profanity. The kids didn’t really know it was bad, either. I don’t think they know much about the Inupiat language. They did throw rocks at a researcher one year, however, so you can’t be too careful.

We plan to bring popsicles back for them next time we are in Atqasuk.