Saturday, February 23, 2008

What is it about kids staring at you?

Normally I love it when kids stare at me. I take no issue with their unabashed, wide-eyed faces looking at me, trying to figure out what makes me tick, or whatever it is they are doing. Normally I am able to smile and wave just perfectly so as to illicit the perfect response. I get a giggle or a shy little grin, a returned wave or maybe even an attempt at conversation in whatever phase of verbal development the little tyke might be in.

Then I pat myself on the back, proud of the fact that kids like me. It's a good thing, it means something, like with dogs right? Kids and dogs are good judges of character.

Maybe that's why it's so uncomfortable when the child just stares, and responds to none of your actions by doing anything more than continuing to stare. As though you are crazy or something. As though they really don't get you and are wondering "What the hell is going over there?"

Come on kid, it's not as though four-and-a-half thousand other people in here aren't screaming like zealots with me.Just turn around, look at the ice and scream your head off too. Don't you know that sporting events are one of the few remaining public intimacies? Intimate events are meant to be shared at an excited and climactic volume.

Maybe it's because I'm such a small woman. Her dad screaming like a madman next to her seems apropos, but the crazy lady behind her, not so much.

The staring is cute at first, I find myself fascinated. But then I find myself disconcerted, and unable to concentrate on what I really want to concentrate on. All I can see, even if I'm pretending to now ignore said child, is her penetrating eyes staring back at me.

Somebody teach that kid to smile or wave back when they are smiled at. Or teach them to stop staring and root for the home team.

I'm not talking from experience though, really. I don't know what you're talking about...

1 comment:

Trav said...

Maybe you're crazy.