Case law

Like a creepy stalker, I have become a person who blatantly stares at other people. Not all people -- just people who are pregnant or who have kids. The reason I do it is to take note of what is acceptable and what is not when you have your kids with you. On Sunday, for instance, B and I went to a Sports Bar to watch a game and I saw a mother there with a baby that had to be 4 or 5 weeks old. The fact that she was sitting behind me did not stop me from turning around in my seat every five minutes to see what they were doing. Score of the Eagles game? Not sure. But I can say that the baby was bottle-fed twice, took a nap, and did not cry one time. That mom does not know it, but she has set a precedent for me that I too could be there with a baby. An example of a negative precedent happened during a recent trip to Target where a dad continued to shop at a leisurely pace while his daughter was in the middle of a Category 5 tantrum. I don’t know what I would have done if that had been me and Betty but I do know that I was close to smothering my own face with a pillow in an effort to make the noise stop. Anyway, so far, my creepy and voyeuristic Lexus-Nexus research leads me to believe that the verdict will depend on the volume level of the experience rather than the location.