Such Fun in Small Packages.

Day care was officially in session once more. Mrs. Griffin stared around her room, pushing a hand through her gray-streaked hair. She possessed the ominous feeling there would be at least one very troublesome child in her group this year. Bracing herself, she walked over to greet a nice-looking couple and their two children. She learned that the older one was named Gerard. He had black hair and squiggly lines drawn all over his arms with a Sharpie. The younger was named Michael (though he only responded to Mikey). He had a mop of light brown hair covering his forehead, and wore thick aviator glasses.
After talking with the parents for a few minutes and watching about the millionth parent-child teary farewell of her career, the door closed. Mrs. Griffin herded the two kids to the carpet in the center of the room to meet the other children.
Next to join the group was a boy named Raymond. He had very frizzy hair and clutched a toy guitar to his chest. Deeming it futile to try to make little Raymond let go of his toy, she simply led him over to the other kids. Not long after, a child named Frankie sat down next to Raymond, combing his black hair through small fingers.
When the last little one came in, a blonde boy named Robert, Mrs. Griffin started a VHS for the group and puttered about in the kitchenette, preparing a snack. In seeing the group behaving like little angels, Mrs. Griffin had completely brushed aside her ominous feeling.
She had no idea.
Sometimes, kids are just kids. They play with everyone else and they act, essentially, like everyone else. Other times, this doesn’t happen. That was the case in Mrs. Griffin’s daycare group. Five boys, Gerard, Mikey, Frankie, Raymond and Robert, broke off instantly from the other children and huddled near each other. It was a case of best friends at first sight. They ignored the movie completely and talked to each other in hushed tones the whole first day, even overtaking the monkey bars at recess.
The daycare leader watched them talk amongst themselves that first day, and thought nothing of it. But, this continued throughout the entire week. They never left each other from the time they walked through the door to the time they parted at the end of the day. She worried they wouldn’t make any other friends and decided to speak to their parents about it.
Mrs. and Mr.’s Way, Bryar, Toro and Iero merely shrugged it off. Apparently, their kids were very close. Perhaps it was better to have a few close friends than many so-so friends.
Over the course of the first month, other children began to ignore the five boys as well as vice versa. Neither side bothered to try to play together anymore. While every else ate at the big table in the kitchenette, Gerard, Mikey, Frankie, Raymond and Robert sat in a circle on the floor. Eventually, Mrs. Griffin gave up on trying getting the two groups to play together. It’s not like anyone was causing trouble.
Alas, Mrs. Griffin basically jinxed herself when she thought no trouble was coming. The very next day, she was standing in the kitchenette, affixing a bandage to a little girl’s knee. She heard an earsplitting scream and whipped around, scanning the room for danger, heart racing.
She spotted little Mikey clutching a fork and sobbing hysterically. She raced over to him and whisked him up into her arms. “Shh, shh,” she said, “what’s the matter?”
Gerard ran over and tugged the fork out of Mikey’s small fist. “Mikey!” he scolded, “you gotta stop doin’ that!”
“What happened?” asked Mrs. Griffin, hugging Mikey.
Gerard tapped his foot impatiently and stabbed a finger at the toaster, plugged into the wall in the corner. “What does it look like he did? He stuck that fork in the toaster!”
Mrs. Griffin gasped and nearly dropped Mikey. “Where did he get that!?” she cried. “We don’t have a toaster in this room!”
Gerard nodded to Raymond, who was standing nearby. “Ray sorta found an old one. He fixed it and Mikey wanted to experiment. I didn’t know he was gonna stick a fork in it, though. He does it all the time. He never learns.”
Mikey sniffled piteously and squirmed out of Mrs. Griffin’s arms, dropping to the carpet beside Gerard. Gerard gave him a hug and inspected his hand. “It’s all pink again…” the two brothers looked up at Mrs. Griffin in unison. Gerard said, “You got any ointment?”
Mikey followed the daycare leader into the kitchenette, where she set him on the counter and put medicine on his hand. “There you go… stay out of trouble!” she added as he hopped off the counter and ran off to join his friends again.

**

A couple of weeks later, all was well at Belleville Day Care Center. Mrs. Griffin decided to let the group make constellation designs with star stickers and silver Sharpies. The children were old enough by now to know not to eat Sharpies (though some didn’t know better than to stick forks in toasters…).
Mrs. Griffin laid out a large pile of sticker sheets and silver Sharpies on a table for the group. Every child was seated and working diligently and Mrs. Griffin went into the neighboring room for a moment to borrow a stapler. When she returned, she noticed one child was missing: Frankie. She panicked. “Where’s Frankie?!” she cried to the group.
A little girl with pigtails curled her lip in distaste. “I don’t know, but apparently he decided to take all the stickers and magic markers with him.”
Mrs. Griffin slapped herself in the forehead.
Robert waved his arm in the air, focused on the leader. “He’s under the table!” he cried.
Mrs. Griffin ducked down and peered under the table. Frankie grinned and waved back at her. He had star stickers everywhere, and had drawn things like anchors and scorpions all over himself. He’d also taken the Sharpie to his eyes and had drawn X’s over them.
The teacher pulled Frankie out from underneath the table and sat him down on the counter by the sink. “Sorry, Frankie, but these tattoos of yours have to go before your parents get here.” She pulled out a tube of toothpaste from the cabinet and scrubbed away the Sharpie marks. She searched him all over to pluck off every last sticker.
Frankie gave her a look of deep dislike, jumped off the counter and ran back to his seat beside Gerard.
Mere moments later, Gerard dropped his Sharpie and stained his black pants. Mrs. Griffin barely had time to react before that little five-year-old boy screamed, “FUCK!”
Every child stopped dead. Mikey, Robert, Raymond and Frankie burst into giggles.
“Oooooooh!!!” everyone else chorused. Raymond clung to Robert for support, laughing hard.
Mrs. Griffin promptly marched all five boys out into the hallway and gave them a good lecture on why saying the F word is very bad. She threw in a little incentive, saying the Boogey Man would come to their houses if they said it again.
They all merely snickered again and ran back into the room. “I’m not scared of the Boogey Man,” said Gerard stubbornly. “A superhero would save me from that washed-up old fraud. Not Superman, though. He’s too whiny.”
Mrs. Griffin eyed Gerard as he plopped down on the carpet for story time. She cleaned up the mess everyone had left behind, stacked their art in a pile, and pulled out a story book.

**

Mrs. Griffin was on the phone with her mother, standing in the kitchenette. She was watching the children like a hawk, making sure that nothing went wrong. When her mother had to go, Mrs. Griffin turned to hang up the phone. It only took that long for disaster to strike. She heard a loud thump and a piercing cry, and spun around to see Robert standing over a little boy with brown hair. The little boy was clutching a toy camera and Robert looked murderous.
With a sigh, Mrs. Griffin called another teacher to look after the other children and comfort the little boy. Then, she took Robert by the hand and marched him into the hall. “Do you mind explaining why you attacked another child?” she demanded, struggling to remain calm.
Robert curled his lip in distaste. “He tried to take a picture of me with that stupid camera. I told him to go screw himself, then I walked off. He just kept following me so I turned around and hit the camera so hard it hit him in the face.”
Mrs. Griffin gave him a stern look. “One, we do not tell people to ‘go screw themselves’ in this daycare. Two, we do not hit other children. Understood?”
Robert folded his arms and looked up at her. “Sure, I understand. But I regret nothing.” With that, he marched back into the room.
Mrs. Griffin followed, wondering where on Earth that little five-year-old learned such language.

**

Long story short, the group of boys progressed through school together. Though they weren’t in the same class due to different but similar ages, they remained the best of friends. Eventually, Mikey decided their group should name themselves My Chemical Romance. Gerard chose a motto: Give ‘Em Hell, Kid”.
And so they did. These boys managed to cause enough havoc to piss off teachers, but they only toed the line of serious consequences. Of course, for this, some of them became outcasts.
Twenty-five years after Mrs. Griffin managed to, at last, rid herself of the group of boys, she flicked on the television. Her teenage grandson had left it on MTV, as usual. She was about to change it when a man’s face filled the screen. She recognized it faintly, then saw the title at the bottom of the screen: Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance, Vocals.
And there were all five friends: Mikey, who looked staggeringly different. His hair had a darker, almost Elvis-ish look to it, and his glasses were gone. Gerard looked much the same as he brushed black hair out of his face, though he was considerably more handsome. Frank looked rather the same… then they showed a video clip that must have been three or four years ago. His hair was black and blonde, and he looked just as hyperactive as he had when he was five. Next was Ray, who indeed looked very familiar. He’d grown his hair out so it looked like an afro. She smiled to herself. Then, last was Bob. He still possessed a certain look when he stared into the camera: a mixture of desire to smash the camera, and an inexplicable confusion.
Mrs. Griffin rested back in her chair, looking at the men. Suddenly it hit her. My Chemical Romance… she’d heard that name before. But where? She got up and slipped into her grandson’s bedroom, where My Chemical Romance posters, printouts and sketches covered the wall. Most of them said things like, “MCR SAVED MY LIFE.”
She had always been worried about her grandson, wondering who MCR was and what they had to do with him. Smiling to herself, she slipped out of the room again and clicked the door shut. At least now she knew his life was in good hands.