Step off. Now.

At the deli counter of an outrageously overpriced foodie market, a snooty, overprocessed, and meticulously coiffed senior citizen looked at me in horror. Butter was strapped into his Moby Wrap, facing forward, and wiggling as though the beet salad in front of him were the best thing he’d ever seen.

[As always, I have no financial interest in mentioning a product I like. They have no idea who I am, I didn't get a free product, I owned it before I began blogging, and I gain nothing from telling you Butter practically lives strapped to me in this wrap.]

She, the woman of the excessive care about her appearance, says, “Oh! He’s drooling” in the tone one might use to exclaim, “Oh! He’s seizing!” or “Oh! He’s choking and turning blue!”

Drooling.
Drooling. Small baby whose mouth never closes, whose teeth might or might not be razoring through his gums, and who genuinely thinks that at any moment he will be allowed to take the WHOLE world and stick it in his mouth, just to see if he can find any hidden nipples anywhere.

“Oh! He’s drooling,” she stammers. I believe she expects me to do something, like protect the market’s concrete floor from his sulfuric acid baby saliva.

“Yeah, he does that. He’s a baby,” I say with a blank look. I refuse the energy it takes to be polite, smile, or educate this idiot of leisure about how normal, unavoidable, and uneventful drooling is for a freaking four-month-old baby.

Today is not a screw-with-me kind of day. I know how to be polite. I just don’t want to. Because I’m tired of stupid people. Really, really, really I am. Of course he’s drooling, you dolt. And you just wasted one of the potentially delightful moments of my day. The choosing of brightly colored and tasty foodstuffs makes me happy. So shut your goat cheese hole and let me do my day.

On a brief walk, earlier the same day, a talkative nurse and her wheelchair-bound charge said hi to me, cooing at the delightful bundle sleeping on my chest. We talked a bit, and when I figured out that Jean, the seated neighbor, is blind, I took off Butter’s socks so she could feel his feet. And before that, talking with a Dad who’d had a rough morning with his children, I offered a sympathetic ear and some mildly amusing faux advice.

I’m not a nasty person by nature. I’m a big old softy. But I’m sick of stupid people.

“Oh,” she says the droolophobe. “How old?”
“Almost a year,” I answer, rounding up to a “shut the f— up” answer.
She looks shocked. I don’t care.

Screw her. She was probably ordering something with black truffle oil. And since she’s not sad or blind or cooing over my baby, she can suck it.

Next time, instead of organic hand santizer in a spray bottle, I’m carrying a vial of baby spit to atomize onto the world’s most daft.

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