Babies cry in Target. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? This hardly ever bothers me. Perhaps at 9:30 or 10:00 PM, I might have to remind my Judgy Brain that people work late shifts and have to shop sometime and don't have child care, but at 11:30 in the morning, I don't even think about it. And people say whatever they have to say to get out of the store without the baby and the grownup melting down simultaneously. I know that.
So I don't judge. I do try to smile at the baby and the grownup. Sometimes a smile and a wave can distract a fretful baby or toddler. At the very least, when I was the mom with the fussy kid, I appreciated the show of sympathy and solidarity.
Today, though, as I smiled, the woman holding the fussy baby glanced at me, looked down at the baby and said, in a sing-song voice "That lady smiled at you! That lady will take you! She will take you if you don't stop crying!"
The only comfort I can offer myself is that the baby was about six or eight months old and can't possibly understand the words. But I am having a very, very hard time finding empathy for the grownup.
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2 comments:
ugh. Really. Poor baby. Maybe (I'm thinking charitably) you caught the poor woman on the worst day of her life, when the 2 other kids and the husband are home puking AND have the flu, and she HAD to come to Target to get groceries because they were out, and to pick up the prescriptions for the 3 and 6 year olds' strep anyway, and the only person who got any sleep last night was the baby, who she is now irrationally jealous of.
LOL, Mary. You summoned more charity than I could in the moment. Thank you.
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