The day was filled from beginning to end with fluff. Dancing bears reciting the alphabets, singing giraffes teaching you to count. Small creatures dressed in clothes from SEARS getting lost and finding their way home. SURF wondered how many adults spent their day drawing and writing this stuff. Could an adult be told, "Look I really don't want a story. I just want you to spend some time with me and just talk. Let's make it about 8:30 and bring some milk and cookies. I've had a day, I can tell you!" "No," she thought, "It would never replace that precious Hallmark moment that 'Mommy, can you read me a story?' had become." So, SURF sang the songs, ate her cookie and drew an exact replica of a Picasso painting that is hanging in the New York Metropolitan Museum without complaint. Her smiling teacher commented that the figure should have two less heads and one additional eye, but on the whole the painting was very good. She then selected a drawing of a stick man walking with a stick dog drawn by one of the other children for the bulletin board.

After a hard day of translating the thoughts of the SEARS-clad animals and supplying them with squeaky voices that no adult outside of Michael Jackson would be caught dead using, the smiling teacher would give each child a cup of juice and a cookie. Acid and sugar, the pre-school tradition of further guaranteeing that some children will awaken wet and some will not sleep at all. I don't know about you, but one hour's sleep only makes me mad at the person that took the time to put me to sleep in the first place. Thus has arisen the "what-have-you-done-to-my-child" stares teachers receive when parents arrive to pick up their grumpy, hyperactive dependents.

When mother came to pick up SURF, it was always the same. A hug, a smile and into the car homeward bound. Sometimes SURF would draw her mother driving or the minute details of passing buildings or even other drivers that stopped at lights with them. But remembering the selection of excellence at Sing-Eat-Take-A-Nap Academy, it was only stick figures that she would show to her mother for approval. The other things she drew, she permitted no one but herself to see.

SURF always had people around her. There were uncles, aunts, cousins and her mother's brother's stepchildren by his adopted wife, or something like that. She also had someone called "grandmother" that she was to address as "mama" but, not to be confused with her real mother who everybody else called by an entirely different name. This mystery name for her mother she could use only sparingly. For example it was all right to say "My mother's name is _____ ," but not all right to say, "_____, will be with you in a moment." "So many rules to learn," she thought. It was always surprising to her to find that even complete strangers who had no previous knowledge of her mother's existence, seemed offended when she addressed her mother directly. This was due to the curious custom among adults of wanting you to say a thing without really saying it. As she grew older, she was told, "Good little girls watch their P's & Q's." As far as she could figure out, this meant Phrasing her statements with lots and lots of Qualifiers.

Most of the people SURF loved went by a lot of such aliases. She was never sure if these various names were titles, terms of endearment or ploys to throw authorities off the trail. Since she was seldom certain, she devised a strategy where she never had to address anyone by name at all. She simply approached the person, looked them straight in the eye and topped off her request by saying "please". The success of this stratagem was proved by the fact that she was held to be the most charming and polite thing you'd ever meet. Her teacher at the Academy thought so as well until SURF stubbornly refused to go to the rest room between the hours of 10 and 11. But that was the past. Today she was embarking on a new adventure.