Friday, May 28, 2010

Shhh

The universe...It knows.

The big perk in this whole confessional drama was that, until it came time for Mike to graduate, I didn't have to think about it - except the universe KNOWS...

My sister in law decided to get us all together for drinks after work tonight - she's been planning it out all week and she was really looking forward to it so, as much as I wanted to come home and spend the night with some bad tv shows, some knitting and a little bit of silence, I pulled up my big girl pants and went out to the bar anyway.  The first half of the evening was fairly predictable, me and a few girls from work trying to make idle conversation while I was far too sober to find any of them entertaining....and then Melissa showed up and things got a little more interesting.  Not, you know, fun, but oodles more uncomfortable, which is interesting in it's own right, because she walked in with her youngest - her seven month old daughter, in tow.

It took me a few minutes to get through all of the 'you brought your baby to a bar' jokes in my head and, while I was trying to find something that rhymed with 'tacky' i suddenly assumed the roll I always seem to assume when there is a baby nearby - 'oooh! shiny!"  Or, at least, that's how they all seem to respond because after all of the wriggling, reaching and generally throwing themselves in my direction, the parents who don't know me well enough to know that infants can give me full on hives in a matter of seconds hand them off.  I can never really blame them, because if you've got an infant, anything that keeps them from crying and doesn't involve something life threatening probably seems like a good idea but, from my perspective, it's a raw deal.  A raw deal emphasized 100 fold by the two soon-to-be-parents across the table who spent the whole night looking longingly at the squirming kid sitting on the table playing with every plastic coated drink menu in reach and practicing her walking.

I haven't held a baby in almost years.  (I know this, because the last time I was in the proximity of a baby for any extended period of time was when my grandmother had major surgery years ago and the only kid there, screamed the whole time because I wouldn't hold her.)  When you're a teenager and you're holding a baby, people don't have much to say, but the moment you become an adult, the first thing people say is "you're a natural" and then the hives start...  Thankfully, my sister knows just how far I've gone not to have to hang out with an infant twenty-four hours a day, so she didn't have much to say and between baby-hazed couple ad the girl who knows me well enough to know when to laugh either didn't notice or found it distantly funny but I was still aware of that sense of impending pressure.  (What a liar I felt like making faces and getting nervous and uncomfortable while she giggled and tried to hug me every time I talked to her is a matter for another day...)

And to think, I'm fairly immune to social pressures....

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