Headphones and Bananas

Chapter 4 – Headphones and Bananas

There is another breed of “nice” people out there who seem to think that they are just wonderful with children and can therefore calm down a screaming child when her own mother cannot.  I will admit that once in a blue moon, this has actually worked.  There have been days where Lily was screaming her little pigtails off and a complete stranger would say something to her and she would calm down.  That has happened.  But for the record, it usually does not.  Yet there are always those that fancy themselves as some kind of Mary Poppins of the transit system, “oh here, let me help dear, babies just LOVE me”.  These are the people that think because they babysat in the 10^th grade (even if 10^th grade was 3 decades ago), or because they have nieces and nephews that they see twice a year, or because their next door neighbor has a baby that smiles at them on the elevator everyday that they will tell me what my screaming child likes and what will calm her down.  “You know, you really should carry a pacifier….maybe if you unzipped her coat…..did you ever think to bring cheerios with you on the bus? …. maybe if she had another toy…..maybe if she didn’t have so many toys….give her a frozen bagel…”  I’ve heard it all. 

One morning we were next to a guy on the bus who had an original idea of how to “help” when Lily started screaming.  All he said to me was, “Watch, she’ll love this” (sure, I’m just the kid’s mother, why include me in your plan??  Just go for it  … at least he invited me to “watch”)  then he took his headphones out of his ears and tried to put them into her ears.  Wait, it’s worse than you think… these were not the kind of headphones that rest ON your ears.  What makes this especially gross is that these were the kind that go INSIDE your ears.  He removed them from his own ears and was mere inches away from putting them INSIDE hers.  Are you @#&$#! kidding me???  I said, “no no no no no no no no….NO!  No, thank you…that’s okay…she’s fine”.  He said nothing, he just shrugged and put them back in his ears.  Of course by then Lily really wanted them, which just kicked the screaming up a notch (thanks a-hole), but luckily for him, he now had his headset nestled firmly back in his grimy little ears and didn’t have to listen to her.  Thanks ever so much for your “help”, you disgusting moron.

I’ve also had strangers try to “help” by giving Lily food.  Another thing I want to ask all strangers not to do: Please, PLEASE don’t give other people’s kids food on the bus.  Don’t offer them ANY food of any kind, and don’t ask their parents if you CAN offer them any food.  This would seem so obvious to me that I’m surprised how often it happens, but it does, so here goes:  A) You don’t know what any kid might be allergic to, or what their parents want them to eat or not eat on the bus (the filthy bus)  B) MOST of the things in your bag that you are considering offering to my child are choking hazards that she is not allowed to have…on a moving bus no less and C) By asking me “is it okay if I give her this?”, and then me saying “No” – my child has seen the entire exchange and is of course going to want the delicious looking jolly rancher that you just pulled out of your bag.  She saw it, she wants it, she heard me say “no, she can’t have it”, and now she is screaming for it.  Again, thanks ever so much for the assistance.  Go give your candy to the moron in the headphones.  You’re perfect for each other.

One time we were seated next to a lady who handed Lily a banana.  She didn’t ask me, she didn’t even include me in the exchange.  I just looked away for one second and when I looked back, Lily had a banana in her hand.  I looked at the woman and she said something about Lily looking like she wanted a snack (really?  That’s the look she gave you?  The “I want a snack” look?) --- Now, I grew up in the 80’s so I went trick-or-treating every year with the fear that one of my neighbors was carefully hiding razor blades inside apples for weeks to prepare for Halloween night. (because you know all the kids out there are just dreaming about that apple in the bottom of a pillowcase full of candy.  Hey, forget all the M&M bags, mini-snickers and peanut butter cups.  Move those aside, I gotta get my little hands on that apple!!) So with this lingering childhood fear of tainted fruit in mind, of course I instantly conjured up images of this little old lady using a syringe to inject bananas with cyanide so she could poison little girls on the bus.  Is that crazy?  Yes, of course that’s crazy.  But, tell that to my paranoid “new Mom” mind at the time.  Luckily I didn’t have to worry about it.  Lily started talking into the banana like it was a phone.  (little did this woman know that getting my daughter to actually eat something was a daily challenge she could only begin to imagine.  If she was trying to poison someone, she picked the wrong kid) – Instead of a snack, Lily turned the banana into a phone.  A large, yellow, potentially-poisoned phone which I promptly threw into the garbage as soon as we got off the bus.  If you still think I’m crazy, just remember that one of our very first bus adventures involved someone giving me vaginal wipes to clean my baby’s face and hands. So, sometimes a banana is not just an innocent banana.