COLOR YOUR WORLD
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It’s always a proud feeling when you are given a look from a total stranger that implies that you have as much business being a parent as you do being a penguin.
My wife and I were both fortunate enough to experience this expression of loathing from a passerby as we strolled with our young daughter.
We often take walks with my daughter because we find it is good exercise for my wife to push an empty stroller while I carry a squirming child. Back before she could walk, it was different, of course. She would stroll along, happy as a clam, mainly because she had no choice but to sit wherever we put her. But as she got more mobile, she learned that she could wiggle and squirm enough to get out of the stroller, and then walk for about two feet before demanding that Daddy carry her.
Of course, on occasion, she will go for short distances in the stroller, and Mommy and Daddy can have a few moments of adult conversation, such as:
ME: Boy, she sure is sitting quietly in the stroller.
WIFE: Yeah, this is the longest she’s done that in a while.
CHILD: OUT! OUT! OUT! NOW! NOW! NOW!
But for this particular stroll, she had gone for several minutes without a demand to be transferred to the ground and then immediately to my arms. Truth be told, we should have known something was up.
As we walked, a woman approached us from the other direction. As she got right up to the stroller, she glanced at our daughter, and then up at us, giving us this hideous look of disgust, as if we were cruising around with a stroller full of dead birds something.
My wife and I looked at each other with a “What was that?” kind of look. I don’t think that, as far as family units go, we should cause lip-curling disdain for folks. We glanced down at the stroller, wondering if maybe the look had been directed at our child.
The stroller has the little canopy top, which was pulled up, obstructing our view of our child. As we both peered over the top of the canopy, the mystery became clear. The woman was definitely making the face at my wife and me, and she definitely thought we were right up there with Marvin Gaye, Sr. for parent of the year.
Yes, there was my beautiful daughter, the color of the Great Gazoo, thanks to her partially digested and completed smeared green crayon.
Apparently, she had smuggled the crayon into the stroller along with her 43 books and 19,000 baby dolls that have to be with her at all times. And while we were not looking, she head not only eaten parts of the crayon, but had smeared green on every part of her exposed body. And, just for effect, when we first saw her, she grinned a big ear-to-ear grin, showing us the chunks of green crayon that she was apparently saving for a later snack.
When the other woman saw this, she clearly thought that we were irresponsible and inattentive parents. Her sneer said it all. When we saw our green child, we most likely affirmed her thoughts since we both nearly fell down laughing. My wife composed herself before I did and went for the camera.
OK, so maybe some of you are thinking the same thing. But if you think about it, this was actually quite a laughable occasion:
1. Crayons are nontoxic. It is estimated that every American child will eat his or her weight in crayons every week of kindergarten. If it weren’t for crayons and glue, most children would get no calcium in their diet.
2. Life is funny. You have to lighten up about the things that are fun and funny. It’s not like she was downing a bottle of tequila or something.
3. I have pictures of her smeared with green crayon and with green chunks in her teeth that will surely scare away potential suitors in 15 or so years.
After we finished laughing and taking pictures, we dutifully cleaned up our daughter, who apparently was feeding off of our laughing and thought clean up was a blast. I’m sorry that the woman who walked past us thought we were such sorry excuses for parents. But I’m even more sorry that she’s so uptight that she can’t enjoy life and laugh when things are indeed funny.