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I’m an animal person. Not only your usual human companions
like dogs and cats, but pretty much every kind of creature that walks, hops,
flies or slithers around.
Well,
maybe not so much that slither part. Snakes are fine, just as long as they’re a
good distance away from me.
I like
animals. A good deal. I’ve been known to exclaim “Puppy!” anytime I’m driving
and happen to pass a person walking a dog. Regardless of whether or not anyone
is in the car with me to hear it or if the dog is old enough to be my father.
It’s
just the way I do business.
One
thing I’m not super into? Babies. Human ones.
I don’t
dislike babies, by any means. I just don’t find them as appealing as animals. I
respond to a baby in a room the same way I do a coffee table: It’s just a thing
that’s there. It’s not adding to or distracting from my life experiences.
I wasn’t
raised around a ton of babies so I don’t really know what to do with one when
it’s around or how to interact with it. I’m not quite on the level of
Schwarzenegger in “T-2,” but maybe just a hair below.
Babies
and I aren’t on the same page, but like I said, I don’t have a problem with
them.
Something I do have a problem with?
Girls and babies.
Not the girls who are really into
babies. The type of ladies of when they see one they immediately exclaim “Baby!”
and scratch it behind the ear, or whatever it is you do with them. That line of
thinking I can at least understand.
The
girls I have a problem with are these super-militant feminist chicks who hate,
hate, hate babies. There is without a doubt a male version of this person, but
today, I want to focus on the ladies.
I guess
these gals look at a little cooing baby as a set of chains, just waiting to
trap them and drag them away from their careers or whatever life it is they
have planned for themselves.
Recently,
a co-worker bought his baby in to work. The kid was greeted with the usual “oohs”
and “ahhs” by most folks. Not by me. I treated it the same way I would treat an
adult that I didn’t know walking into the office: I just let it be unless we
crossed paths. Then I’d offer it a friendly nod or tip of the cap. But that
would be all.
A female
co-worker, who also happened to be one of those militant feminist types, well,
she had her own way of dealing with the baby. She made a scene (in her cube
away from the crowd, but she sat next to me so I could totally hear it) with
another female co-worker acting as if the guy had just bought a giant plague
rat into the office. There was also lot of cattily making fun of people for
being excited about the baby.
Everyone’s
free to like or dislike whatever they want, but the idea of being so
belligerently opposed to something that can do you no harm is insane to me. The
only things on this planet that I would make me act that way if they suddenly
showed up at my job are things with sharper claws and teeth and a more pronounced
killing instinct than I possess. (Like a bear. From a far though, I would
totally think it was cute.)
Otherwise, stop being such a reverse
stereotype and chill. That’s right. You may not like to hear it, but you going
out of your way to hate on babies is just as cliché as an effervescent love of
babies. It’s just at opposite ends of the cliché spectrum.
And
leave the people who like babies alone to like babies. They’re not hurting you
any more than I am when I see a stray cat and immediately start drawing up
plans in my mind for capturing it and bringing it home.
Maybe that
girl never got “the talk” about where babies came from and thought that if she
got too close, she’d get one too. Who can say?
Or
maybe – more likely considering the rest of her body of work at the job – she’s
just kind of a pain in the ass.
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