Saturday, November 24, 2007

Naked Children Make Me Uncomfortable

Imagine you’re me.
Take a look at the picture on the right, give yourself a big fat mouth, a mighty superiority complex, and a dynamic feeling for follicular fashion. Now, instill 15 years of mothers pulling their children away from you on sidewalks, of squinty-eyed parents asking where, exactly, you were taking their daughter on your date, of one particular mother, as you were leaving to get some ice cream cones, making you promise that you wouldn’thurt her daughter...
Go ahead; I’ll wait.
Good? Good. Now that you’re me, imagine walking into a coffee-shop with the singular intention of using the washroom, in this particular case a slightly secluded one-john affair, only to find a five-year-old peeing with his pants around his ankles when you fling open the door.
What do you do?
I’ll tell you what I did: I let out an "eep!", kept my hands where everyone could see them, frozen in the same pushing-motion I had used in opening the door, and backed slowly away from the washroom like it had threatened me, which, in a sense, it had.
What I can assume to be this peeing-machine’s dad saw me backing away and went rushing in to see his son. The kid came out cheering - "I did it myself!" - but the father took a long hard look at me as he dragged his son past.
I, of course, still had to use the facilities, so I masked my fear with a casual strut, did my business, and emerged with a fist-pump like I had just won the Super Bowl...I, too, had done it myself, but nobody seemed happy for me, as there was no laughter in the coffee-shop that day.

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