Can’t We Shaaaaaare the Pole?

Chapter 9 -- 

When Lily first noticed that other people on the bus hold on to the pole, she wanted to do the same.  I will admit that I was an extremely paranoid mother, more so with Lily as she was my first.  You can tell from earlier posts how much I LOATHED strangers touching her and sharing any number of germs with her.  So I was equally unenthused by her love of the silver poles, those tall shiny buffets of germs just waiting for unsuspecting little hands.  Ugghh!! – Not only did she love holding onto the pole, she needed to have her hands on it at all costs, even if we weren’t anywhere near one.  There is a bar that runs along the ceiling that you can reach from just about anywhere, and some buses still have the ”straps” that hang down, but the poles…no, you have to be in certain spots to reach the poles.  So, first came the fidgeting and fussing if we were not close enough to reach the pole, and we’d have to try to inch our way over to one (very difficult on a crowded bus at rush hour) – Then, once we got close enough for her to grab one she became very possessive of it.  Her limited vocabulary at the time included the word “MINE!” (as most babies’ do), and whenever someone else would hold on to a pole that she believed to be hers and hers alone, she would scream, “Mine!!”.  Most people found this either cute, or annoying, or just ignored it.  It didn’t really evoke that much of a reaction to be honest, usually just a polite smile, maybe a tiny laugh if the person was feeling friendly or an eye roll with a sigh on the side if they didn’t find Lily’s theatrics all that charming.  But there was one woman who wanted to engage in conversation with Lily, in the very annoying high-pitched, sing-songy voice that people reserve for babies (how annoying this must be for babies everywhere), “Can’t we shaaaare the pole?”, to which Lily said, “Mine!”. “Do you know that these poles are for aaaaall the people on the bus?” “Mine!” – and back and forth it went.  Super.  I’m not sure if this woman thought that maybe if she kept it up, she’d teach Lily a new word or get her to grasp the concept of sharing?  I have no idea what she thought, but after a super-annoying five minutes or so, she FINALLY got frustrated, gave up, turned to the person on the other side of her and said, “Well!!  I’ve never been told off by a one year old before!!”   Well, I suppose that’s what you deserve for trying to reason with a one-year old who has the misguided idea that she actually owns the poles on the bus….  And if she thought that simply yelling “mine” was Lily’s attempt to “tell her off”, she should spend 2 minutes with her now.