We were sitting at a fast food restaurant this weekend. A young girl (I've never been good guessing women's ages (or anyone else for that matter), but I would guess she was somewhere between 16 and 20) came in carrying a tiny baby and headed straight for the restroom. Her mother, carrying a child carrier and the child's blanket, sat at a nearby table while her father ordered the food. After a few moments, the girl came out of the restroom, holding the baby tight to her chest while burping the child.
I exchanged an awkward I've-got-a-kid-too smile with her. Actually, all of my exchanged smiles are awkward; I'm as socially inept as they come. I turned my attention back to coercing Zoey to eat more than 1/16th of a chicken nugget.
Ella noticed the girl burping the baby. "That's a tiny baby," she whispered to me. "No lie. She must have popped that pup out yesterday," I replied.
Five minutes later, we decided to leave. As we were getting up, I noticed the girl was still burping the baby. As we passed her, I took a quick glance at the child. I did a triple-take to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.
The girl was burping a doll. The hell?
I had no idea why she was pretending to have a child. Or why she was going to such extremes with the ten-minute burpathon and the carrier and everything else. I figured it must be part of some Home Ec class (or Domestic Engineering class or whatever politically correct empowering term they're using nowadays). But when I was in high school, the kids in Home Ec carried around an egg for a week.
An egg. Not a doll. Certainly not a doll with a carrier.
What gives? Do I just need to get out more?
Baby? On Board
