The scene: It's noon and I walk into the local coffee shop to meet a friend and her baby for lunch. Milo is with me. He's in the sling, sitting cross-legged and facing out. I start chatting with the nice coffee shop lady behind the counter and try to figure out what to order.
Suddenly this older lady swoops up to us and starts gushing about how adorable Milo is. This happens very quickly, as I'm looking at the menu. I turn towards her and see that she has grabbed Milo's hand and is kissing it repeatedly. WTF, lady? I've never seen her before in my life. All of the sudden she is slobbering all over Milo's hand. The hand that he likes to put in his mouth, oh, about a thousand times a day. I have no idea if she's healthy or if she has a cold or something much worse.
What is it with people who think they can just reach out and grab random babies and start handling them, or worse, kissing them? Did I say you could kiss my baby? The problem is that my sense of decorum makes it really, really hard to say anything about this. It's actually happened before so I've rehearsed what to do when I see somebody about to swoop in for the slobber fest. I'll say "I'm sorry, but he has a cold, so please don't kiss him. I wouldn't want you to catch it." I wasn't able to do that today because the lady lunged in so quickly that she was kissing him before I knew what hit me. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the last thing I want to deal with is two sick babies.
So back off, slobbery strangers!
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