It's 4 a.m., when the man walks in. He's wearing a razor-ironed, tab-collared, button-down shirt tucked neatly into light brown nylon slacks, also ironed to a sharp crease. Wristwatch is centered perfectly on the back of his hand. His head hasn't the ability to look down at us, his back is so ramrod straight. And in one hand he carries three magazines—I'm thinking Fortune, Money and BusinessWeek.
His shoes click as he walks from the front of the line to the end, then to the front again. I don't hear him sniff as he passes us rabble littering the floor with blankets, pillows, Doritos, portable TVs and laptops—but I know he's sniffing in his head. I didn't care; my ass hurt.
I'd been sitting on the concrete-hard floor of the Carlson Education Building on the UNLV campus for five hours, and I had three more to go. I could barely remember my son's name, let alone take solace in the idea that, in a few short months, my kid would be sneezing and vomiting all over the snob's kid.
Anyway, this wasn't about me. This was for my son.
I wasn't camping overnight on the floor for U2 tickets. This was for something far more valuable.
Day care.
Not just any day care, either. UNLV's is one of only six in Las Vegas, one of 17 in Nevada, accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which, according to its website, is "the largest and most widely recognized national, voluntary professionally sponsored accreditation system for all types of early childhood schools and child care centers."
And because it's on a campus with students eager to volunteer time for class credit, the teacher-to-child ratio can sometimes be as high as four to one.
Even if I could afford to stay home or hire a nanny—even if the idea of day care is fairly foreign to my small-town upbringing, where every kid's mom stayed home, even if we don't look forward to the cost, which will all but eliminate the meager savings I've accumulated—I might still want this.
They do cool things. There was art on the wall made from shaving cream. They painted leaves. They painted with their backs on the floor with canvases taped to the bottom of their desks, a la Michelango and the Sistine Chapel.
Sure, it would be nice if day care was valued enough to get hefty subsidies from Uncle Sam in order that all parents give their kids great day care—you know, the kind of subsidies they shower on farmers and oil companies.
Then again, that's not the issue. The issue right now is my aching back and the snoring from the darker end of the hallway. The sounds are preternatural, reptilian, a maelstrom of gurgling guttural inhalations and the trumpet call of intermittent farts. Viscerally disgusting and funny at the same time.
We got there at 6 p.m., almost 15 hours late, apparently: One too-eager couple had gotten there at 9 a.m.—almost 24 hours early. My wife stayed five hours, I took the 11 o'clock shift and stayed until 7 a.m., when she returned to do clean-up, taking care of the paperwork when the center opened its doors.
It paid off. We got one of the five or six slots for 6-month-olds. And we heard that only newcomers do the overnight stay thing and that next semester, the process might be computerized.
A few days later, I'm not so sure further automation would be the best thing. After all, didn't camping out reinforce the sense of dedication and awe for what this little boy has already brought to our lives? At the very least, it's made for my first war story, something to tell the kid when he's old enough to listen and wise enough to understand that in my telling, I'm hinting as to the sacrifices I made for him, and that he should remember those sacrifices the next time he gets bad grades or skips work or does any of the 100 other things that I did growing up that I don't want him to do growing up.
I could do that, but I won't.
I just want him somewhere safe and fun when we're at work. If it takes a night on a rock-hard floor to get that, I'll do it.