Jan 25, 2011 16:02
It was the first morning of 2011 and I was heading across the Golden Gate to Fairfax to pick up Jonathan and head up to Middletown to Harbin Hot Springs. The plan was to camp over night and soak for long amounts of time in the hot baths.
It was early in the morning when I left, the house was silent and still when I left, so was the city. Everyone who been out all night were still snug in their beds or perhaps watching the early morning Rose Parade on tv. Driving across the city was fast and easy since there were next to no cars on the road. Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge was the same, blankets of fog rolled across obscuring the few cars that were on the bridge with me.
I arrived earlier than I expected in Fairfax where I was going to meet Jonathan. So I went to the market to pick up something to eat for the drive up. It was cold. I had left my coat in the car since I wasn’t thinking it would be so cold inside the store. Teeth chattering I checked out the aisles for food stuffs. I was checking the shelves of granola bars when the attack happened.
I was minding my own business looking at the boxes of granola bars, looking at the prices and flavors. Next to the granola bars was the baby food section and a young mother walks up holding her baby. She was dressed in snow boots, blue cow pajamas and an orange parka. The woman, not the baby, it was wrapped in a blanket, it’s clothes shall for ever be unknown to me. The young mother, who smelled of cigarette smoke was paying me no heed, or I her. I was busy being transfixed by the many boxes of granola bars. How can there be so many varieties, that’s madness. Suddenly the woman swings to her right to continue onto another aisle. Her whip like actions caused the baby’s head to yank backwards away from her body…smack into my arm full force.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” the mother says to me angrily as she now cradles her baby’s head, which is fine.
“I’m not the one hitt’n innocently non moving people with babies” I retort.
“You should have watched where you were standing!”
“Because I know people are going to attack me with their babies…had I known.”
I don’t know how they do it up here in Marin, but where I’m from people rarely attack me with their babies. Sure they some times ask me if I want to hold them or even watch them, knowing full well that at any time they could explode in an onslaught of poop and vomit. But at least you know that’s coming. Here in the hinterlands, apparently it’s expected to have flinging baby heads so you best be prepaired.
I left the market with a box of granola bars and headed to Jonathan’s my shoulder not at all hurting from my brush from Fairfaxian baby attack.