Joran

Sometime last year, a father brought in his son to get candy. They turned out to be locals, and that turned out to be unfortunate for us.

Son is about 6 or 7 years of age, and comes in after 3:30, after school is out for the day. His father has a 1 dollar bill for the kid to spend. There is not much for the kid to get, even after pointing at the chocolate in the case and is denied. He decides he wants jelly beans. His father opens the bins for him as we look on. To our shock, said child reaches in with his hand to taste, and to grab jelly beans for his bag. Repeated chastisement later, we got the kid out the door, with a $.98 purchase. We breathed a sigh of relief, after much discussion.

A week or two later, who walks in, but the kid and his dad. Same thing, 1 dollar to spend. Except this time, the kid was loud, yelling across the store, "Dad, Dad, DAD!" and his dad totally ignored him. Meanwhile, it is impossible to ignore him from the workers' point of view. We learned a new tidbit that day: the kid does the same thing (grabbing, whiney), and also has a name, Joran.

Hearing that name soon sparked terror in our hearts. Seeing the door open to those two was enough to make us want to run away. We came to know him by name, and always had our guard up when he walked in. Who knew a little boy could strike such terror in the hearts of women?

And then one day several months ago, we never saw him again.....and we don't miss him at all.