viragette

I enjoy a certain degree of control over my surroundings. This personality trait has been largely positive for me. For example, as a scientist, I have never been asked: “What do you mean you forgot the control!?” That is just not going to happen. There are times when my desire to control is not helpful, but on the whole I’d say a bit of planning is never amiss.

(It’s not that I dislike spontaneity. The HB and I spent the two weeks of our honeymoon in wholly unplanned adventures, camping or driving wherever we decided to go that morning - sans reservations. Because we were so exhausted from wedding planning, but still.)

Anyway, after planning comes the Policies. At some point in time, I’ve come to such a definitive conclusion on a given subject that I make it into a policy. When faced with a relevant real-life situation, never fear - I have a policy. Planning for my senior moments. Some of my policies are fairly common:

Policy # 105: don’t say anything bad about someone if they are not present to defend themselves.

Policy # 546: try not to run over small children.

Policy # 587: no unauthorized touching on the dance floor by anyone other than the HB.

Policy # 911: if I happen to see Dick Cheney in my neighborhood, remember that my mother loves me and doesn’t want me tortured, so try hard not to throw anything.

There are a few of my policies, however, that tend to get me into trouble. For example:

Policy # 623: don’t ever hold a baby, and if forced to hold a baby, on no account will I sniff the baby’s head.

Often times, especially around my husband’s family, I have been in the presence of these adorable little fiends, and someone has wanted me to hold the baby. I would politely decline. Then one day my husband, grinning in malicious glee, outed me: “Viragette has a ‘policy’, she doesn’t sniff baby heads.” All heads turned in my direction. I swear even the baby seemed intrigued. They’re like cats, they know you’re allergic.

“Um. Well, that’s true. Generally, I don’t hold babies.”

What am I going to do - say I might drop your baby? Because I might. I mean, heaven forbid, but it could happen. But that’s going to go over like a lead balloon in a room full of baby-having women. They would laugh at me and then just start throwing their babies in my general direction. “Here! You’ll learn fast enough! I sure did!”

My “generally” line would never be sufficient to deter them from pressing babies on me, especially now that they know I have a ‘problem’.

“But, … you don’t sniff their heads?”

“Eh. Yes. I … don’t.”

“… Why?”

Curse him. OK, here we go. “Because they smell good. And I’ve seen it happen. To friends. They are going along happily oblivious and then, wham! they sniff the baby head. Their happiness is shattered. They don’t feel complete anymore - they need more baby head. They start spending time around babies until finally they just get one of their own. It’s baby-this and baby-that. It’s a baby-head-sniffing epidemic. And I don’t want to press my luck. [starting to sound a little shrill now] I’m happy like I am! I know it smells good, but at what cost!?”

So basically, this is the part where everyone giggles and looks at me with sympathy.