Possumblog

The worst instance I can think of was when I was visiting England in 1982.

I was out in the morning, and facing a rough lane.

A woman came down that lane wheeling a good-sized baby in a pram, maybe nine months old, and the baby was holding on to both sides with a stiff upper lip.

It was a great baby. Not whimpering, or whining, or crying of discomfort. It had a round, bland face.

"What a handsome boy you have there," I said.

"It's a girl," she said.

My uncle, my mother's younger brother, has a posthetic leg, as the result of an attempt to hitch a ride on a moving train.

My problem was remembering which was the real one. I knocked my self silly several times tackling him by the wrong leg.

As far as doing something embarrassing, one such occurrence was this week. Recall that I returned from medical leave last week. While I was gone, another guy had a stroke. He returned this past Monday; when I saw him I grabbed his hand and shook it. He had to tell me he's weak on his right side now and not to do that anymore.

Perhaps, "holding onto the pram with both hands and maintaining a stiff upper lip" would be more appropriate.

The harms we do with good intentions.

Janis, all I could think of was the Monty Python song about Camelot, with the line about "I like to push the pram a lot."

Anyway, maybe you'd have been better off to tell the lady her baby looked like Winston Churchill.

I managed to offend a classmate just last night so grieviously that he felt he had to stomp out of class. The instructor spent time talking to him, and then talking to the rest of the class, and then to me about the situation.

So I have to write a mea culpa email this morning and make apologies. Good grief!

Is there any way you can expand on what happened without further offending people, you ol' Offending Guy, you?

Incidents like Janis' are why we used to color code infants. (pink for girls; blue for boys) It wasn't to reinforce societal-defined gender roles but to keep adults from embarrassing themselves.

And if all else fails, (i.e., no clothing cues or name tags) you lean down and say, "What a BEAUTIFUL baby!"

And by the way, never ask a woman when she's due. She might not be.

I've said a number of stupid things over the years, including calling a boy baby a girl. And I hear comments all the time about The Toddler Girl's birthmark. Oddly enough, now that it is fading and getting smaller, in some ways, it more resembles a bruise, and we hear more questions about what she did to her head. I do appreciate it though, when people at least ask me instead of muttering under their breath about it, but then I guess people who think you've dropped your child on her forehead probably think you are a danger to her and shouldn't be spoken to.

Basically, it all boils down to what my mother always taught me. "Personal comments are odious."

That's why I like your mama so much.

I wouldn't assume that you'd dropped the baby, Jordana. At that age I was perfectly capable of conking my head myself.