Ugly Baby Rant
This morning a colleague popped her head into my office, "You have to come out here and see the cutest baby in the whole wide world!"
Immediately my maternal hackles raised because, everybody knows, my baby is the cutest baby in the whole wide world.
I'm not one of those women who fawn and dote and get all worked up about other peoples' babies. Especially people I hardly know, or don't know at all. My family's babies, yeah, okay, I get excited about them. My friends' babies, definitely. Mere acquaintances...no flippin' way.
So, I don't typically drop everything and go running when a baby enters the spa, which is rare but does happen on occasion when staff bring them in on their days off. If I happen across a baby in my strolls through the spa, I might stop and have a brief chat before continuing on my mission. That's about the extent of it.
But this morning, I was forced into doting-on-strange-babies purgatory when my colleague insisted I come quick to see a child. She didn't just stop by and say, "Hey, go check out this child" and then continue on. Nope. She stood there, staring at me, until I made an effort to get up.
Sigh.
I stopped typing, set aside my work, and got up, all the while thinking, "What on earth am I going to say to this woman? 'Hi, I've only come to look at your child.'"
I went gamely into the accounting office where the supposed Cutest Child was, and then realized I was in a whole other world of trouble, seeing as how the child in question is most certainly not cute, but rather borders on downright repulsive.
People say that there is no such thing as an ugly baby. People are wrong.
So I stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot, trying really hard not to look at this child because, well, because she wasn't a pleasant thing to look at and I'm not real good at hiding my feelings. The expression on my face gives me away 95% of the time. Okay, 100%. I'm so not good with the poker face.
Finally, I said, "Oh, look at all her curls!" and then tried to bow out gracefully.
Ridiculous, really. A note to all my working readers out there: do not force your colleagues to go look at a child that you think is cute, because your definition of cute is yours and yours alone, and no one should have to endure the agony of making small talk about an ugly baby.
What a way to start a Monday morning.
Immediately my maternal hackles raised because, everybody knows, my baby is the cutest baby in the whole wide world.
I'm not one of those women who fawn and dote and get all worked up about other peoples' babies. Especially people I hardly know, or don't know at all. My family's babies, yeah, okay, I get excited about them. My friends' babies, definitely. Mere acquaintances...no flippin' way.
So, I don't typically drop everything and go running when a baby enters the spa, which is rare but does happen on occasion when staff bring them in on their days off. If I happen across a baby in my strolls through the spa, I might stop and have a brief chat before continuing on my mission. That's about the extent of it.
But this morning, I was forced into doting-on-strange-babies purgatory when my colleague insisted I come quick to see a child. She didn't just stop by and say, "Hey, go check out this child" and then continue on. Nope. She stood there, staring at me, until I made an effort to get up.
Sigh.
I stopped typing, set aside my work, and got up, all the while thinking, "What on earth am I going to say to this woman? 'Hi, I've only come to look at your child.'"
I went gamely into the accounting office where the supposed Cutest Child was, and then realized I was in a whole other world of trouble, seeing as how the child in question is most certainly not cute, but rather borders on downright repulsive.
People say that there is no such thing as an ugly baby. People are wrong.
So I stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot, trying really hard not to look at this child because, well, because she wasn't a pleasant thing to look at and I'm not real good at hiding my feelings. The expression on my face gives me away 95% of the time. Okay, 100%. I'm so not good with the poker face.
Finally, I said, "Oh, look at all her curls!" and then tried to bow out gracefully.
Ridiculous, really. A note to all my working readers out there: do not force your colleagues to go look at a child that you think is cute, because your definition of cute is yours and yours alone, and no one should have to endure the agony of making small talk about an ugly baby.
What a way to start a Monday morning.
posted by Amy at 9:30 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home