Real life, with a dash of Doctor Who

I went to the movies with some friends tonight. The movie was terrible, but pales in comparison to the awfulness of the show the woman in front of us put on.

I was chatting with Kevin when a woman walked into the theater carrying an infant seat. As she got closer I noticed that the baby in the seat couldn't have been older than a week and was likely just 3 or 4 days old.

Firstly, I don't think taking infants to movies is appropriate. That's why I never did it when Dominic was a baby. Secondly, this wasn't even a kid's movie. This was Eclipse. I know the baby won't understand what's going on, but it's a loud, violent movie. I'd be afraid of a baby being upset by the noise.

On the other hand, I've been a new mom and I remember when Dominic was a week old. I sat on my couch crying because I felt like my life was over. That I'd never go to another party or restaurant or movie again. Transitioning to motherhood is difficult even under the best of circumstances and I wasn't about to judge another woman trying to cope with that change as best she could. I figured as long as the baby was quiet I would mind my own business and if the baby wasn't quiet I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

The woman set the infant seat down across one seat and got all of her belongings settled.

Then she left.

I mean, she put the baby down and just walked out of the theater. As I watched her leave, I kept thinking, "No, she must just be going to say hi to someone she knows. No, maybe she dropped something. She'll be right back. She'd never leave her newborn in a theater with a bunch of complete strangers." But she did. She just left the baby there. I just sat there with my mouth hanging open, staring at the exit.

Kevin said, "That is the most ignorant thing I have ever seen."

The man sitting closest to the infant seat said, "Uh... did she just leave her baby here?"

She did. She just left it there. I was completely flabbergasted. My mind was well and truly boggled. I sat there gaping at the baby, at the man next to her, at Kevin and my other friends, at the people behind us also expressing shock at the situation.

"No," I said. "There have to be cameras. This is Candid Camera. I know it." I started looking around for cameras. I didn't see any.

Denise checked to see if the baby was real (yep).

The man sitting next to the baby said, "You saw me. I didn't touch that baby."

I pulled out my phone and checked the time. "She has five minutes. If she's not back, I'm getting help."

I could hear many people behind us whispering "baby".

A woman a couple rows behind us leaned over and tapped Kevin on the shoulder. "Did she really just leave her baby?"

I kept checking the time. Exactly five minutes later, the mother walked back in. She sat herself down in front of me, pulled out a bottle of pop she brought from home, woke up the baby, and settled down for the show.

For a newborn, it had really good theater manners. It didn't talk or text during the show. It made a few little newborn noises, but no crying. So, I mean, there's that at least.

But nobody asked me to sign a waiver to be on a hidden camera show, so I'm fairly certain it was real. And that's depressing.

I've been feeling really proud of the presentation I gave in History class last week about the Roswell incident. I got my graded paper back yesterday and was happy to see I'd gotten a 97% on it. I had 3 points deducted because the prof felt I didn't adequately establish bias. He's right. I should have added a paragraph describing why I thought the authors were so biased. He also left a comment at the end that said he especially enjoyed my summation paragraph because I "didn't mince [my] words."

Yesterday, I was reading an article at feministing.com titled Pondering Being Prepared to be Wrong. The quote she used in her article was, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original," (Sir Ken Robinson) which I'd never heard before, but really liked. And it made me think about my history paper...

I left the last sentence of that paragraph in because 1.) I felt it was a strong statement of opinion and this was, after all, an opinion piece. 2.) When you write an opinion, you have to be prepared to be wrong. Or at least be prepared for people to disagree with you. 3.) I genuinely felt that way and I was prepared to defend my opinion if it was challenged. *

Last night a classmate of mine got up to give her presentation. I'm going to paraphrase her presentation, but this is very, very close to exactly what she said.

"I read 'The Case Against Barack Obama.' The author didn't think he should be president. He used quotes from Obama. That's it. The end."

I was a little shocked. The professor asked a couple questions trying to get her to talk a little bit about the book. Things like, "What was the author's thesis?" and "What sources did he use?"

I asked a question, "Did the author convince you?"

She said, "I don't want to start a debate. I already thought he shouldn't be president, so..."

Another classmate asked if the author had brought up Obama's birth certificate. She just said, "No."

I was mostly disappointed because I'd heard a lot of people's reasons for thinking Obama isn't qualified to be President, but I hadn't heard any that held any water and I was interested in hearing some. Also, lately I've been enjoying a good debate. I'm a little disappointed that she wasn't up for defending her own opinion.

Was she afraid to be wrong? Or did she just not read her book?

I'm beginning to see where Kent State got it's motto: Kent read. Kent write. Kent State.



* Just as a refresher, the last paragraph of my paper was this:
"I found this book to be very poorly written. The authors seemed unable to organize the information into any coherent form. The book is filled with typos and their endnotes occasionally do not match the superscripted numbers in the text. The end result is a muddled mess of conspiracy theories that most readers would find difficult to slog through. This book not only fails to prove the authors’ thesis, it adds nothing to the existing body of work on the subject, and may actually detract from it. What this book needed was a good editor to cut the superfluous garbage from the finished product. But, then, there wouldn’t have been any book left to sell."

If you're friends with me on Facebook, you've already read the punchline of this story. But here's all the details:

I ordered my schoolbooks early last week. The bookstore will box up your order and hold it for you until you come pick it up. It's kind of a slick system they've got. I got an email from one of my instructors on Tuesday that said, "By the way, you have class on Friday and you're gonna need this book." So I went to pick up my books at the book store yesterday. The girl behind the counter was very helpful and found my preorders for me. Then I told her I also needed the additional book and gave her a slip of paper with the book and author written on it. She took the paper and asked, "Which class is your daughter taking?"

I could only gape at her as I was doing the mental math to figure out how old I would have been when I got pregnant to have a college age daughter today (and those of you who know me know exactly what I look like when I try to do mental math).