The lady who opened the door to greet us hadn’t washed her hair this calendar year. I thought immediately that she had given up bathing for her New Year’s resolution. Pausing for a moment, I decided to attempt to honor my resolution (made each year for the past twenty-three) and try to see the world positively. Perhaps her hair looked so vulgar because she had been advised that olive oil was a great way to treat dandruff. She appeared determined to solve that problem once and for all. She then opened her mouth and displayed a full set of rawhide-colored teeth. It was remarkable that she managed to keep that number of teeth in her head with such precious little effort. I gave up on my resolution, again.
The lady of appalling hygiene was the tour guide at the first daycare facility I ever visited. She would later tell my wife and me that she had fourteen years of experience in daycare. That is a long time to have not copped onto the fact that she could go a long way toward allaying parent’s fears about leaving their precious bundles with strangers if she would simply step through the shower occasionally and rummage through a drawer to find her toothbrush at least once a week.
My wife, child and I followed greasy girl into the infant room, which reminded my wife of documentary footage she had seen of Chinese orphanages. The soviet style cribs that crowded the room, each with prison issue mattresses, brought to my mind some particularly grim episodes of Locked Up Abroad. Amidst the cacophony of cries crowding the room, I spotted what appeared to be one happy child. He stood grasping the bars of his crib and smiling a hopeful smile in my direction, but the poor lad’s cries soon joined those of his inmates when he realized that I wasn’t there to liberate him. When I left the room, his eyes followed me the whole way, clearly wondering why I was abandoning him in his time of need.
Our tour concluded in the director’s office, which was two overcrowded rooms in complete disarray. The director herself sat at a folding card table in the first room, eating a fast-food lunch and licking her fingers after each bite. After greasy girl provided us a flyer that was modified from its original form to have the increased fee amounts handwritten over the original values, the director had the last word for us. “I always tell people to look around, but you’ll be back,” she said unconvincingly. “Only if your girl here cleans herself and you reform this gulag,” I said. Actually, I only thought that. I actually just thanked her, and we left as fast as we could.
