Picnic

...and the blogger would just like to preface this with the confirmation that she is NOT going crazy, really; she's mourning the death of Kurt Vonnegut. Also, she read a brutal article about a young Sierra Leone girl who had her hands amputated when she was twelve years old and it's been haunting her all weekend. I suppose, for the purposes of this post, it would have had more symbolic resonance if it was her feet that had been chopped off, but so it goes....

Baby Fangs has gigantic hands. When she crawls on the floor they sort of splay out on either side of her, and my intense and unconditional love for her does not prevent me from noticing that when she does this she has an appearance not unlike that of a tree frog. A tree frog with Clarence Darrow's head. She has started to stand up on her own which means she is probably weeks away from walking and then (*sob*) she won't be a baby anymore, technically she'll be a toddler. This has me worried, at least from a blog perspective, because while "Baby Fangs" has a rather sweet, benign sound to it, "Toddler Fangs" sounds ominous, and makes me think of Chucky dolls with knives. When she's standing upright, her huge, tree frog-like hands aren't at all apparent, so calling her my little tree frog won't work.

And I refuse to call her Clarence.

When High Intensity was a baby, she looked like, um, uh, well.... like Adolf, uh... Hit...ler..... We took pictures of her, and with the suspenders, affixed black, squarish moustache, hair combed over just so and German war songs blasting out from the stereo, the resemblance was quite striking. Oh boy, now you think I'm a Nazi. I'm not. Well, maybe a recycling Nazi.

But speaking of Nazis...

Today was the first nice day of the year. The plan was to spend the day walking to Superstore to pick up items for a picnic, and then go to the park. But when we got to the store we were STARVING so we stopped in the food area where they've set up tables and ate our lunch there. I people-watched, and I have to say, the miserable winter we just went through has been hard on the fine folk of this city. Wow, did people look bad. Grey and foul and not smiling at all. However, when they saw Baby Fangs, crawling her jerky, enthusiastic, tree frog crawl around the floor, they would beam. Everyone smiled at her, even people you would not think would smile at a baby, even people who looked like they hadn't smiled since Diefenbaker was in power. They would slow down their grocery carts and give her waves and one guy who looked like a mafia hit man bent down to pat her head. It was nice seeing all these gloomy people, who were spending the first nice day of the year inside, shopping for mountains of groceries, perk up when they saw her. I felt like I was doing a community service. I was very proud of her.

And then. The Nazi Door Greeter came rushing over and snapped at me impatiently to get my baby off the floor. "She might get hurt," she told me brusquely. I felt like a child who'd been reprimanded by a control-freak teacher. Crushed, I sat there for a little longer with Baby Fangs on my lap and continued to watch people, but it wasn't any fun anymore, and no-one was smiling, and what kind of world is this anyway when a baby isn't allowed to crawl about?

I got MAD.

I don't usually get mad, I mean MAD mad at little old ladies just doing their job. But for whatever reason, this really hit a nerve. I stared at the food hoping to see something delicious to take my mind off it all, but since I'm on a Spring Health Kick (which is going about as well as my January Health Kick went, thanks for asking) there really wasn't anything good enough to distract me from my ANGER.

So when we left, I went over to the old lady and gave her hell. Then we went outside, and the plain-clothes store detective came running after me. And I started to bawl, right there in the parking lot. I said it was pathetic that on such a nice day everyone was inside shopping. I said the baby was cheering everyone up. I said people should be at the park. I said I was the mother, and I could look after my kid just fine by myself. Then I said, " I must sound like a total nut," and was not contradicted.

I am totally embarrassed, but in my defense I know I'm right. I am a teacher. I know people, and her crawling on the floor there was not pissing off ANYONE except the Nazi Door Greeter. And she was not in any danger because I was watching her like a hawk. I would chew off my own arm before I'd let something bad happen to her.

Kurt Vonnegut would have liked to have seen babies crawling around on the floor.

But anyway, that's it, I'm done with Superstore. We're going back to the land, and becoming totally self-sufficient with regards to our food. I'll dig up the back yard and plant tomatoes, cabbages and yams. And orange trees. It's very important to eat one item of citrus a day. We'll keep a cow in the garage and I'll learn how to make cheese, jam and ketchup potato chips. Hmmmm, we'll need to get some Bordeaux grapes growing back there too. Ooooh, squishing them with our feet to make wine will be fun! We'll let a pig run wild through the streets of the West End in the summer and then come autumn, Pa, I mean, Mr. IQ will catch it, butcher it, smoke it, and blow up the bladder for High Intensity and Baby Fangs to play with. Ha!

That'll show that stupid Superstore a thing or two.

"You wouldn't run over me with a grocery cart, would you?"