One winter when I was still eighteen and stupid, I was waiting to be kicked out of the mall before I would finally go home to an environment that liked to laugh at me. Johnny Rocket's had just closed so I had migrated away from their switch outlet, and was running on a 6 hour battery life (4 if you consider my use of Photoshop, Furcadia and iTunes at the same time). Sitting cross-legged and empty-headed on the edge of a potted plant with illusions of grandeur, I huddled closer to the hot, angry little laptop and synched my freezing digits to the peking pork that was my only other source of heat.
A small girl was suddenly beside me.
'What are you doing?' she asked, full of awe and five year-old stupor.
I took a second to watch the Blame My Parents scene become forcefully evicted from Hot Topic when they closed, and waited for the irksome gnat-swarm of Slipknot lyrics to fade before replying with 'Colouring a picture.'
It may have alarmed her that I did not look up from my little screen. Either way, she had a golden cross around her neck, so I'm sure if anyone asked her there was no risk in talking to creepy strangers. She began to bounce her heels on the glazed side of the planter, the way I used to when I was young enough my feet couldn't touch the ground from a sitting position and my superego couldn't grasp the severity of childish ignorance from a standing one.
'Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of.' Said this painfully adorable specimen of grammar school valedictorian. 'What are you made of?'
I pondered this intently. If you asked most people, I was made of College Freshman Arrogance, or How I Successfully Let The Bank Foreclose On My Childhood. If you asked my parents, I was made of brilliance and creativity (or callousness and overconfidence, depending on which you asked). If you asked the crowd I used to unconsciously surround myself with in high school I was made of 'epic win' -- Whatever the damn that means to the real world -- and if you asked me, I was made of C:\WINDOWS\SystemRoot\system32\dfrg.msc that could not effectively do its job in a world so polluted by boundless human stupidity. Really, how I answered this little girl wasn't important to me; How long I could keep her sitting with me instead of wandering about, however, was.
At 10 PM in Sacramento the people who laze about lifeless shopping malls carry the worst kind of terminal illness (ask me what this is if you're curious), and little girls should be in bed. There were people here -- Lurking under escalators, in the shadows of chic architectural cul de sacs, in the hidden microcosm of moral dust and dregs -- who would not hesitate to scoop up, up and away a child this trusting and violate her ten kinds of all to hell.
This in mind, I simply lean over and whisper to this kid, 'You know, I think while I was being made, someone accidentally knocked anchovies into the mixture.'
And from wherever she was all along, the girl's mother emerged from the primordial ooze of an expensive shoe store, and with an appalled look at what her daughter was talking to, ushered the little girl over with a look of intention to scold.
With a relieved smile I looked back to my little binary alphabet soup. Crisis averted, I thought, or potential crisis at least. No rushing progress.
And then I heard 'That lady's made of anchovies, mom! Isn't that cool?!'
Cuteness overload. Cue the swelling chorus of cavities.
Among everything we destroy, there are things worth preserving. That line was one of them, and if you read to this point I'm impressed with you already.
Speaking of preservation...
Critical Battery
Your battery life is low. Turn off your computer to avoid losing your work.

I am Zilla, commonly referred to as the computer virus Totmuncher Simplex. I am every time you've wanted to crush buildings and steal newborns, I am every time you've had to help a complete asshat at work with a smile, I am a juggernaut of broken dreams manifesting themselves as metaphorical kicks to the ego, and they say I destroyed Tokyo once.

I really like to give and receive hugs, and take part in massive epidemic cuddle puddles. :3

[Ti'ZZYZX] [En'/ROOT/] [Am' ] [Na'Professor Strangelove] [Ix'Zero]
FGPSX / Furcadia: Zero / IMVU: Zerotication