People Watching At The Neighborhood Playground

Monday, November 12th, 2012

23 months.

I am a self-proclaimed “people watcher.” To be honest, I’m never not people watching.

It’s like every person is a character and every conversation is a plot line. Basically, life is a non-stop sitcom.

This afternoon while at the neighborhood playground with my son, a young playmate approached a fellow parent nearby:

“Hi, my name is [let's just call him Michael] and I am 4 years old.”

The kid sounded like he was trying out for a Welch’s grape juice commercial in 1995.

A few minutes later, the kid introduces himself to me too. I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.” Then I turned away to help my own son down the slide.

“Two more minutes and then we’re going home,” I heard the boy’s mother say to him.

Exactly two minutes later, she followed up on her promise: “Okay, time to go now. I told you two minutes ago.”

He pretended not to hear her, so she pretended to leave the playground without him.

And his response?

“NO! No, no, no! NO! I DO NOT like you anymore, Mommy!”

So the irony in this people watching scene was that the little boy who appeared to be a well-mannered child ended up morphing minutes later into “that kid.”

But hey, who’s not to say that my son seemed weird to other parents there at the playground?

After all, he was the kid who illegally went down the slide backwards, about 27 times in a row. (I was so proud of that little goober!)

Not to mention, what about me? I’m the dad who stands at the top of the slide to assist my son once he climbs up there, making sure he doesn’t fall off the 6 foot drop.

Perhaps to other people watchers, being my son’s personal stunt coach seems odd in what is considered normal and appropriate for parents at the playground.

That’s why it’s fun to people watch. You get to see a lot of interesting people do a lot of curious things. Likewise, you get to entertain others who think you are an interesting person doing curious things.

On second thought, maybe that’s not a good thing.

A Baby’s Sixth Sense

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Week 6.

It’s a sort of eery feeling getting up at 1:30 AM, 3:30 AM, and/or 5:30 AM every morning to feed and change Jack.  While it’s still dark and quiet, while I’m only “awake” enough to put the word in quotation marks, and while my memory barely records the routine actions taking place during the twilight, I’m sure I’m subconsciously looking for something out of the ordinary.  As I hold Jack in one arm and his bottle in the other, the dimly lit room casts a strange shadow on his face.  Sometimes when I look at him during this time I get a little creeped out.  In this situation he reminds me of a baby version of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz (played by the Jewish actor Bert Lahr); that movie and the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, though they are both wonderful classic movies, have always freaked me out a bit.  On a similar note, it also seems like I’m taking care of a little old man, with his receding hairstyle (Jack Nicholson style), his chubby cheeks, and his baby-version-of-cussing-somebody-out cries when he’s really hungry and his diaper is wet.

To make matters more theatrical, there are times when I am taking care of him during the middle of the night when it’s like he peeks around my shoulder and sees something and gets this calm yet curious look on his face. Does he see something?  A guardian angel?  Jesus?  Maybe the ghost of Bert Lahr?

I wouldn’t be surprised if babies can see into the spiritual realm.  It could make sense in a way; babies are completely innocent.  They are unaware of damning traps like pride and greed.  I could see how a baby is naturally closer to Heaven than we adults are.  Sometimes I envy the things my baby may be seeing.  But then again, it would be just another thing to spook me in the middle of the night. It seems every account I can immediately think of in the Bible where an angelic being spoke to a human, the angel always had to start the conversation out with “Do not be afraid…”  But Jack isn’t scared by whatever he is seeing around me that I am less aware; if he’s actually seeing anything supernatural at all.

Bert Lahr as The Cowardly Lion: