Look. I get it. Times are tough. In America, the strife is hot.
But it won’t seem that way if you are holding a baby.
That’s right. I’ve been four months into new parenting and those “I’m a dad” realizations have been stalking me.
Most of these realizations are cliché and obvious things that if you were to tell someone that was also a parent, they would gently nod their head like, “Yes, I know. We all know. Get on with it you silly goose.” I fancy that a search string on our most notorious internet search engine, along the lines of “new dad realizations,” would bring up a lot. None of them new, parenting being quite an old hobby.
But in the spirit of sharing, as we do when we find ourselves adding a new identity to our brain software, here’s my favorite so far: Strangers will always treat you with joy and kindness if they see that you have, in fact, a baby on your person
It is a well known saying/fact that baby animals, especially mammals, are designed to be cute so that we care for them until they get bigger and normal-looking. Perhaps it’s the big eyes or the helplessness. Or maybe it’s the trickery of evolution, coldly selected for the continuance of our species. It’s odd to know that our species is very good at dehumanizing those of our species with a bit of history and personality. But a human with none of these things, such as a baby, can only be gaga’ed over.
Granted, I have experienced what it is like to be around someone with a baby, how other people swoon. But you don’t understand the frequency and the magnitude until you carry one around yourself.
This week, I took the baby, which I will now call “my son,” to his four month doctor’s visit. I opted to not use the baby carrier because my son is very much in the phase of impatience if he is not at baby crow’s nest height. So, with my son sitting atop my forearm, staring at the world behind me, which has to be some sort of metaphor, I walked into the medical building.
While waiting for the elevator, I felt my son turn his head to a newcomer who had stopped behind me. I turned and saw a man my age smiling with that big teeth smile we reserve for novel moments of pure happiness. And he was giving that smile to my son. When he finally looked at me, I don’t exactly remember what he said, but it was disarming and genuine enough for me to awkwardly fail to field the proper response back to him.
Two others joined us on the elevator, and this was enough for a raucous commentary on my son’s smile and cuteness, talking to him more than I’ve ever seen strangers talk to other strangers on an elevator. Him, returning their smiles with his toothless magnanimity.
“Enjoy it now, kid,” I thought. “Elevators are places to talk about the weather or pretend you’re not in the company of fellow ascending travelers. We mostly study elevator interior design but never do anything with the research.”
Forty minutes later, four month doctor’s appointment in the past, I was making my way out of the elevator onto the first-floor lobby when I dropped my son’s visit summary report. I may be a new parent, but I can balance a child and pick up a couple pages of stapled paper off the ground with something like aplomb. But before I had a chance to locate the dropped paper, I was halted by the tenacity of an older gentleman, vaulting himself out of his chair to help me, saying, “I got it!”
This man was probably twenty feet away from me and only gained four of those feet in proximity before I had the report in my hand again. I smiled and thanked him.
“I love babies,” said the woman managing a check-in station next to him.
The above comment didn’t seem like it was meant for me though it was said loud enough for me to hear it. It’s a normal when you are holding a baby. Any time we are out in public, people are glancing over at us and smiling as if they just utterly can’t help it. I hear the words “cute” and “baby” everywhere we go. Or exclamations like, “Awww!” Or even just the plainest description exuberantly said, “Look at the baby!”
It has come to my attention that I have joined a gargantuan club with solid perks–kindness and general cheerfulness being some of them.
The informal social clubs that I’m used to are ones we all know. They are about tastes in music or books or clothes. We call this “Nerdom” sometimes. But we all nerd out in our own ways.
If you like The Beatles, you’re in a big club. We don’t get too excited when we meet a fellow Beatles fan. We do get excited when we encounter a fellow niche club member like that of geology fans or stationery fans.
Having a baby is, as far as I know, a very popular and broadly understood club. More popular than The Beatles I should say. (John Lennon could have never gotten away with saying that they were more popular than babies.) But I have never seen someone’s eyes light up or seen one of those yippy-skippy claps that have more in common with cheerleading than audience approval as I have at the mere offer to show pictures of my son. No fellow pen enthusiast has ever freaked out at our collective admiration for, say, the Uni-ball Signo DX. When my wife talks about rock striations with fellow geology enthusiasts, there are no raised voices or complete and utter smiles. (Actually, there almost are. My wife likes rocks a fair amount. Sidebar: When we first met, she had a rock collection on the passenger floorboard of her truck.) With babies, hyper is the norm. People freakin’ love babies, and they love your baby almost as much as you do.
So I have joined a new club. I like this club. It’s full of the lovely sides of people. And it makes me feel hopeful about everything. That is, until later on, at home, my son gets cranky because he is tired but fights sleep as if it was his mortal nemisis.
We should all go through the world with a baby, especially when the world seems yucky and contentious or has the vibes of an elevator conversation. I’d say a week would suffice as a cure-all to all affliction. We could create some sort of babyshare thing, like an Uber or AirBnB for babies. Because once you walk around in public with a baby, you feel like the world has shrunk down to a village of people literally investing in the future. And that’s pretty rad.