I've just come home from an afternoon at the cafe. It's not a bad life. I sit, eat lunch, drink a pot of tea and wait for inspiration. The cafe is about a quarter mile from my house. I walk there, and it might be the only trip into the public realm I make all day. I don't mind that one bit, having realized lately that the more I keep from interacting with people, the less annoyed by people I am. From people, I exclude those that I know, those on bikes, those who run when I run, and those who take their dog to the park when I do (as long as we don't have to do too much chitchatting).
Look, it's my epiphany and I'm happy here and usually I start to see the ugly bits of the underbelly well within a year somewhere but this pleasant isolation is saving me the sight. Yay!
At the cafe, women minded their children. Or didn't. A kid came to stare at me while I wrote so I smiled first, hoping to end whatever mesmerization had overtaken the kid. Then I raised my eyebrows, tilted my head and exhaled, at a moderate volume. The kid moved away. I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to indulge wandering kids like that, but even if I did, what would I possibly have to say to them. "Hey, kid, you like to stare at women slurping tea, huh?" I'm not sure this contributes in any more beneficial way to the village we're supposed to raise than my loud, impatient sigh. Kids gotta learn, right?
All of this to preface two funny articles appearing today on the tabloid wannabe online paper over here: the first, headlined, "New 'win a baby' game draws fire," and the second, headlined, "Get sterilised... and win a car." They use an 's' in sterilized. I'm just quoting.
Ah, cultural deficiencies. Whereas India is battling the conundrum of overpopulation by incentivizing a sterilization scheme with offers of a car, motorcycle and tvs, plus a little cash bonus of about twenty bucks to go through with the procedure, over in the UK, a fertility charity got a license from the gambling commission to sell tickets for IVF treatments. You'd think, maybe, the two countries could just have a chat about their disparate conundrums and engineer some sort of population swap. Is that horrible? Well. Just a thought.
I swear I'm pretty sure there are a sufficient number of babies in the world to keep us all in baby puke and intrusive stares for all time. As my intentionally child-free doctor told me, "I'm going to be so much richer than all those silly mums. Plus, I don't have a list of complaints to share with my co-workers." Indeed. Well, she did complain about the complaints, but I suppose that's a bit like complaining about the transfixed kid in the cafe. We get to walk away if the parents don't figure out how much their offspring (or complaints about their offspring) bug. Yay. I'll take my $20 now, thank you.
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