Saturday, September 1, 2012

EVERYONE FEARS A BABY

So tonight we made a visit to the Orange Street Fair, and annual event in the city of Orange that involves my favorite things, cart food and beer - nothing's as delightful as standing on a sidewalk eating a messy, freshly cooked souvlaki and downing it with beer.

As it is every year, it was turribly warm with a fearsome sun, but this year was different - this year, we had babies.

Being a polite sort of person my habit is to give way to others and stand politely aside while those older/female/portlier/notnecessarilyalloftheseatthesametime go ahead, it's what gentlemens do, which makes navigating the throngs of sweaty, buzzed Orange Countians difficult to do, in fact it'd bring you to a grinding halt as the next bro lopes by with a Bud light spilling out onto his pants or the inked hep-cat 50's wannabe guides his Bettie Page-be-banged (talking about hair styles here, people) pin-up wannabe to his awaiting fellow soul-patched small-brim hat wearing buddies, or cats, or whatever the hell they call each other.  At this point, when it looked like I'd never get to the beer cart, my wife instructed me to forget those people, they'll get outta the way.  The crazy thing is, they actually did!

The seas of people parted in front of our stroller like a Russian ice breaker racing towards the North pole, plastic surgery disasters practically leapt out of the way for fear that they may actually contact our pram.  Which, I think, speaks well of these folks, that they want to treat our littlest Orange County citizens with some gentleness, or perhaps it's that they were afraid that it was catching, i.e. littleness, or perhaps pregnancy and the resulting little one would happen if they just accidentally touched the stroller, but it was pretty amazing.

The funny thing was that the same phenomenon didn't hold true for the older children, so what's the cut off?  Is it when they're one?  Three?  Surely not eight?  At what age, at what point do we stop getting out of the way for others?

Thing is they actually shouldn't want to accidentally touch me - I work in health care, I'm probably swimming in MRSA.

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