weird topics

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Weigh-In Wednesday: Waving at Babies

My husband and daughter are absolutely mortified by my habit of interacting with babies and small children in public.

My position: Reacting enthusiastically to our youngest members of society is a key part of the social contract.

Their position: It’s weird and creepy.

To be very, extremely, crystal clear: I’m not approaching strange children. I’m talking about being in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, and a baby in the shopping cart a few yards away waves or babbles at me. Or standing in line at the bank or the airport, and a toddler makes eye contact and smiles.

I will 100% always smile or wave back.

On occasion, I have been known to talk to a baby. Like, if they proffer a toy they are holding, I might say, “Oh, that’s a beautiful duck.” Or if they say, “Hi!” or “Bye!” I will respond in kind. I stop short of asking children their names.

I do respect distance; I’m not getting up in a stranger’s personal space, no matter how small that person is. I’m not going to tickle a bare foot or pat a child on the head. That is a bridge too far. But waving and smiling and even playing peek-a-boo all seem reasonable to me.

Trying to think back to when Carla was small, I think it would have hurt my feelings if she tried to participate in social behavior with a stranger and they ignored her. I thought she was darling, and I was proud that she felt confident enough to interact with other humans, and I would have loved it if adults had responded to her bids for engagement. I did not (and do not) love it when strangers ask Carla her name, or where she lives or goes to school, although these are good opportunities for us to discuss what kind of information is okay to share with strangers and how to respond politely and truthfully without giving away too many personal details. (Also, most of the time, these questions seem very innocent and friendly, with no ill intent from the asker.)

I do understand that the calculus of what’s appropriate or not might be different for men than it is for middle-aged women. Although I still think, like, making silly faces at a baby over the back of an airplane seat is a totally acceptable way to interact with a young human.

However, I am willing to acknowledge that I may have wildly misunderstood the assignment. So I would like to know what you think.

image from Canva
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Not Quite a Friend, Not Quite an Enemy

Great, now I have early-2000s Britney Spears stuck in my head. 

I need a word for something. Well, for someone, really. 

The word is for someone who is more than an acquaintance – someone you see fairly regularly, like a coworker or a Sunday school classmate or a person you volunteer with or a brother-in-law. 

But they are not a friend, because, well. They just aren’t. Maybe your personalities clash, or you have wildly different feelings about politics/vaccines/childrearing. Or maybe you have tried to be friends, but have learned that this person doesn’t share your morals or any of your interests. 

And yet you are constantly thrown into situations with this person, because of work/family/church/volunteering/school. Whatever. So you must interact with and be civil to this person. Or, at the very least, tolerate them. 

And it’s not like they are AWFUL, or anything. They have good points, along with the ones that make your eyes get very wide. They’re witty, or charming, or generous, or good at connecting you with others, or skilled at what they do. 

They aren’t an acquaintance. They aren’t a friend. They aren’t an enemy. (And, for purposes of this post, let’s say that works like “coworker” or “sibling-in-law” or “classmate” do not apply.)

What is the word for this person? 

The word I’ve used most frequently for this type of person in my life is “frenemy.” But that doesn’t feel quite adequate. It implies more of an edge, I think. I want a more neutral term. Like “acquaintance” but with more intimacy.

Do you have a person like this in your life? 

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

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Untimely Death (the Topic! Not an Actual Death!)

Listen, I know literally NONE of the kind, lovely people reading these words right now is concerned with my untimely death. (Disclaimer: Am not dead, nor near death.) (Disclaimer to the latter half of the previous disclaimer: As far as I know.) Anyway. You KNOW about Life, and how it Happens, and also you are (likely) a blogger as well, and know many of the infinite reasons that keep a person from blogging. Also, I have taken MUCH longer blog breaks than A WEEK, get a grip, Me. But ALL WEEK I have had this little voice in my head saying, “Update your blog. We are in pandemic times. People will fret.” And I have countered that by saying, repeatedly, as to a child who has selective hearing about getting their socks on omfg, GET A GRIP, and yet here we are, metaphorically sockless. Well, now I’m not even sure how we got here, to bare feet. Seems I have lost the thread. 

Let’s start again. 

I think the pandemic has made me a bit panicky about… well, many things. But this week, at least, I am (gently, musingly) panicky about what if someone I care for but don’t know (YOU) should suffer something awful – too awful to make blogging possible? Is there some sort of blogging phone tree (or, PLEASE, email tree) that we need to subscribe to? I suppose the blog is as good a central messaging system as any, as long as someone remembers/is directed to post there.

In the case of my untimely somethingsomething, if and when it should occur, I feel confident that a) a few bloggers know enough about Me In Real Life that they could find out what happened and report back and b) when I was freaking out that my husband and/or I would die during our tenth anniversary trip to Europe, I did put a little note in A Place That People Would Find, and it included my blog password and a request to post a note about my death. I did not include anything about updating social media, but I have Real Life Friends on instagram who could potentially let people know, and I never post on Twitter anyway, so I don’t think they count in the same way. The point is, presumably, someone at some point would let you know. This is all assuming anyone would care if I suddenly dropped off the face of the earth, but I am assuming YES, you would care, because you are kind and lovely and also because thinking otherwise is the path to madness.

But what about YOU? Do you have such a plan in place? Most importantly, please don’t die. But also, I would CARE and I would WANT to know. 

Oooh… now I am really ramped up on this topic. If you are unprepared to get even MORE MORBID, then I suggest you skip this post. I will post something more cheerful tomorrow, I promise. 

Here is the more morbid part:

I would want to know details. Listen, that sounds ghoulish, I know. But I’m not saying, like, ALL the details. Just… details. 

My husband and I watched an episode of Shark Tank the other night, and it featured this really great entrepreneur who was an ex-Marine and who just gave off this vibe of Niceness and Sincerity. He and his partner got a deal for their product. But then at the end of the show, there was a note on the screen that said the show was dedicated to that same man, and then listed the dates of his birth and death. It was shocking! I was shocked! 

I immediately went online to find out what happened, and from what I could tell, he’d succumbed to cancer. One or two articles implied that he had perhaps been sick for awhile. But I wanted MORE details. What kind of cancer? How long had he been sick? Was he sick while on the show? Was his death expected? I guess this is morbid curiosity, right? Wherein you feel that if you know the details of someone’s undoing, you can somehow avoid them yourself? I don’t know. 

And I FULLY understand that he and his family have a right to privacy. Fully understand. That makes total sense. 

However, he is a total stranger to me. YOU are not. And I would want to know – not all the details, of course, because you also deserve privacy. But maybe like, the cause of death, and was it sudden or expected? How is your family doing? Is there something I can DO, like buy a meal for the family or donate to a favorite charity?

Maybe I need to write an In Case of Death blog post, with some fill-in-the-blanks so my husband or whomever can fill it in. Like, how is Carla doing. And is my husband taking time off work. And if there will be a funeral/memorial service. And if my parents/in-laws will be coming to help take care of Carla. And maybe my state of mind, toward the end. “She keeled over doing what she loved, eating nachos” – something like that. 

Perhaps what I am suggesting is the reinvention of the obituary. But in my head, it would be somehow different, for the blog readers. 

It would be ideal, I think, if there were some person who knew me enough to know the details, but who wouldn’t dissolve into tears writing about them in a blog post. (You see that I am assuming tears, as well. Not that I am assuming everyone has to be stricken with unbearable grief, or anything. But I would appreciate a few tears.) I wouldn’t know how to go about setting up an arrangement like that, though. Presumably the dispassionate blog poster would have to interact with one of the teary-eyed family members, to get the appropriate information. Maybe the pre-written post is truly the best plan. I can put it in a prominent In Case of Death folder on my computer desktop. There. Now you know the plan.

Belatedly, in that I have already mentally and wordily COMMITTED to this post, I see that Swistle wrote about this very topic years ago (much more concisely, and less morbidly). That makes me feel better (although accidentally derivative), that other people have similar concerns. 

Okay. If I were to take the big sleep tomorrow (again: no PLANS to do so), what would you want to know to feel satisfied and like you had Closure?