I cannot stand the idea that anyone I come in contact with throughout the day, no matter how brief the encounter, might leave with a bad impression of me. I put tremendous effort into avoiding this, and it works most of the time. (Or at least I think it does. Please don't tell me if it doesn't.) The problem is that babies seem to have a built-in judgment of me that they are born with.
For some reason, be it my dashing good looks or my fatherly emotional stability, I am always the person a parent chooses in a room full of young adults to interact with their child. I don't usually mind this, since the kids are usually between the ages of 3 and 11 and are thus old enough to consider me a likable person, but it becomes a real problem when the child is a baby. It invariably goes down something like this:
1. Parent offers child to me to either talk to or hold. Understand that I am not, under any circumstances, given a choice in this matter--the parent wants the baby to have attention now, and any attempt to escape is almost guaranteeing my permanent banishment from their home and entire social circle.
2. I reluctantly accept the offer and either make a very lame attempt at holding the baby (after 18 years, I still have no idea how--I have a lot of respect for those 16 and Pregnant girls only because they are not only able to hold a child properly, but do it in front of a camera) or try to strike up some sort of conversation. I cannot and will not do baby talk, which is usually what the parents are expecting me to do. When I was a baby, I found baby talk demeaning and objectifying. Probably.
3. The baby does one of the following:
- Begins to cry loudly enough to mobilize local police stations
- Attempts to slide off my leg (if I'm sitting down) or wriggle out of my arms (this option seems highly illogical, since if the baby is successful, they will fall on the ground and cause themselves brain damage, but I guess talking to me is that bad)
- Stares up at me really awkwardly until the situation gets awkward enough for me to give the baby back to his/her parent voluntarily
4. The parent snatches back their child, scoffs at me with disapproval, and probably whispers apologies and criticisms of me into the baby's ear as if I can't hear them. Any attempt I make at tension-easing conversation (i.e. "Wow, he/she wasn't having any of that! Hahah...") falls flat.
The strangest part of the whole sequence is that I never really did anything in interaction with the baby. The parent's outstretched arms towards me, intending to transfer the child into my possession, are enough alone to send the baby into some sort of attack of writhing and bugged-out eyes. This is only made worse by the parent's repeated baby-talk utterances like, "You want to sit over with Kelly?" or, "You want to talk to him now, don't you? Don't you?" I don't mean to tell other people how to be a parent, but I'm thinking that a baby mimicking a seizure while you're trying to do something is probably a pretty solid hint that they don't want it to happen.
