Thoughts on Fatherhood 7

Yesterday my wife approached me and said, “I have to go to Target for an eye exam, do you and the baby want to come?” I responded, “Not really” and then quickly added, “unless you want us to”. My lovely wife then said, “I want you to” and off we all went to Target.

We pulled into the parking lot, walked into the store, and instantly my wife ran away from the baby and I. My little one was in her travel seat which snapped into the kid carrier section of the shopping cart. This seemed a bit dangerous so I placed her in the cart itself which resulted in making me feel like she was safer, though empirically I have no evidence that is the truth. Placing my child inside the basket also had the unintended consequence of her being her invisible to casual observers.

As we strolled through the store I felt confident in my parenting abilities, well semi-confident as I was absolutely terrified she would start screaming which would lead a police officer to confiscate her from me. We went through the clothing department with little incident, save for her staring at the halogen lighting as if it were the most impressive thing ever created. We strolled through electronics and I watched her little head rotate to follow a 50 inch LCD TV as we slowly rolled by. Next up was the toy section and somewhat unsurprisingly, that was where we started to have issues.

We were next to the life sized Nerf weapons when she screamed, “Whah!” sharply and suddenly. I did my best to softly shush her but figured we should quickly relocate to another, less stimulating, aisle. In board games it happened again, “Whah!” I shushed, but nothing came of it, and I shushed again. Board games were about to send me to jail without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars so I rushed into more familiar territory, video games.

Though my child remained upset, the fact that Fable III was already out distracted me significantly and I blurted, audibly, not loudly, “awesome” upon realizing this fortuitous news. Oddly, it was at that point that I notice my child was quiet. While I was somewhat bemused by the fact that my little girl might be an XBOX fan at this young an age, I surmised that was not the calming factor as showing her the box of the game only served to upset her.

We moved into the candy and junkfood section of the store and at this point her little cry of “Whah!” was being complimented with a guttural, “Meh!”. Shushing did not work, the pacifier only served to annoy, and every timed to rubbed her forehead she angrily slung her head in the opposite direction. Again Target distracted me from my child when I noticed the insane amount of calories that were in a particular breakfast cereal I enjoy. This time I simply stated, “can you believe this?” to my child and she stopped making noise.

It was at this point I realized my child was made happier with the simple sound of my voice. The fact that my girl was responding, positively, to my voice made me a very proud poppy but the fact that it looked as though I was talking to a shopping cart made me slightly self-conscience. At first I tried to speak softly to her when no one was looking, but that proved to be too inconsistent to keep her happy.

I swallowed my pride and by the time I reached the pet supply aisle I began to talk my shopping cart with alarming regularity. I read names of products, lists of ingredients, and even remarked on whether our dog would enjoy the chewiness of various products. My child went from “Whah!-ing” to smiling broadly and even laughing occasionally. By the time we got to the vision center we were both having such a good time I was hoping my wife was not ready for us. Turns out that embracing my inner crazy person in a crowded store was a freeing experience.