Did anyone ever tell this lady that you shouldn’t bring
infants to quiet coffee shops where people are trying to work? I realize there
is a significant amount of restlessness that comes with being cooped up at home
with a baby all day. And yes, I know on a day like this – grey and freezing in
spite of being mid-March when the weather is balmy in Denver and in many other
places – it’s tough to go to a park for the getting-the-fuck-out-of-your-house
break that new moms need. But the nonstop, one-sided commentary between this
woman and her 2-month-old (who just puked up on the counter) is a little
distracting.
“Oh, your diaper is dirty, isn’t it?”
“OK we’re leaving now. No screaming in the restaurant. We’re
going to leave.” (this was stated about 10 times – clearly just to assuage
those of us nearby)
“We need to find a new place to live, don’t we?”
Now that I type that, it suddenly occurs to me that this
woman might legitimately be in a very bad way. I mean, she doesn’t look
homeless. But. Maybe I’m just an asshole.
Every time I find myself getting irritable with strangers (about
283 times a day), I undergo a sort of guilty flurry of afterthought wondering
if I have a cruel heart and am unnecessarily intolerant. What if one of these
targets of my irritation is some sort of genius with a painful, abusive home
life? What if the guy on the subway who keeps clearing the mucus in his throat
like he’s the champion of hacking up lungers has esophagus cancer and can’t
help himself?
When the baby let loose a particularly piercing scream, I
winced a little and the woman noticed and once again told the kid, “OK. We’re
leaving now.”
She then went to change the dirty diaper (I know cuz she
told the kid everything) but before she left she glanced my way and said,
“Sorry if he was bothering you.”
I went to the St. Patrick’s Parade in Manhattan on Saturday
and I was bracing myself for irritating people but had no idea of the scope of
it. We emerged from the Metro at 9:30 a.m. and there was already a sea of
21-year-olds wearing green capes and drinking 40s. Yelling like frat boys. We
went to an Irish bar where the staff was really Irish (thus deterring us from
ordering Car Bombs … out of respect) and already annoyed as hell with
everything. The parade went on from 11 to 5. In the rain. And sleet. All the leprechauns
got water-logged. Four-leafed clovers were squashed to mush. We all got soggy.
But the parade went all day. I do love bagpipes.
This morning the sound of helicopter propellers woke me up
at 6 a.m. When I walked to the subway at 7:15 there were four helicopters
hovering high above. Obviously, I wondered if there was a killer on the loose. I
stared at them for a good three minutes while everyone around me went about
their business. When I got off the subway there were fire engines roaring down
the street with their sirens at 3 trillion decibels. It made me think the world
was ending. But when I looked around me, nobody else seemed to think anything
was amiss.
