Eau de creepy

I've hit a dry spell in the blog fodder department recently. It's summer, blah, blah, blah-dee, blah. I was thinking of writing a light-hearted open letter to all OB-Gyn's, after my appointment yesterday, about exam etiquette and how I thought it was bad form to ask the $64,000 second baby question while tickling the cervix of their patient lying prone on the exam table. I was even going to throw in a few jokes:

Well, doc, you seem to have taken up residence in there already. Don't think there would be much room for you and a fetus. But I suppose you could knock out a wall or two to make some more space. Har, har, har.

Hey, doc, while you're in there could you slap a coat of paint on the walls? Things could really use some freshening up. Ba-da-bum.

I decided that you've all been through it (except you guys, and in your case sorry about the va-jay-jay talk) and don't need to be reminded of all the mirth and merriment that is the annual gynecologist visit. It's your loss, really.

So just as I was about to slam my foot in the door of my car just so I would have something to write about (complete with pictures! Of my purple-y black foot! WhooHoo!), the fodder found me. In the aisles of Target, to be exact. While perusing the selection of linens at the red-bulleted yuppy Mecca for suburbanites he approached me...

The Inappropriate Creepy Guy.

I could smell him before I could see him. While checking out the 220-count cotton sheets (which probably won't fit my freakishly large mattress, btw) I was struck, literally knocked back, by the heavy scent of Polo. I didn't even know Ralph Lauren still selling that stuff. I'm making a law right now that all bottles of Polo should be immediately incinerated. Or, better yet, dumped in a large hole and buried. Please don't call Greenpeace, they won't understand that we'll be doing the world a favor. I don't trust anyone who bathes in that shit.

I thought that maybe the olfactory offender was long gone, though his scent lingered, so I stepped a few feet away from Chicky Baby who was sitting in the cart trying her damnedest to gnaw her way through the top of a container of Gerber Sweet Potato Puffs. Then, from out of nowhere, came this voice that immediately made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"Oooh, hooow oold is sshheee?"

I whipped my head around to see a man in his late 40's (I'm guessing), dressed in a conservative blue dress shirt and trailing that nasty scent, coming at my child. I should pause here to mention that people, men and women, tend to come from far and wide to talk to my daughter. It's not a shock that someone would ask me questions about her. Now, I'm not implying that she's the most beautiful baby ever to shoot out of a woman's midlands - but, let's face it, she is damn cute - it's just that she has this was of engaging strangers in a way that makes them powerless in her gaze. She is the nymph and they are the ship. Or is it, her face is the siren song, she is the rock and they are the boat? Whatever. Chicky has this way of making eye contact and maintaining it for a few seconds before letting her mouth slowly creep up at the sides to reveal her killer smile. Then, when the person is a stammering, wilty mess, she starts to act coy and shy, tilting her head to the side just so and then facing them again with a big smile and batting eyelashes. I'm doomed when she becomes a teenager.

But this man never got a glance from my child. Her back was to the direction from whence he came and, like I mentioned before, she was trying to eat her way through that can of baby heroin.

"How ooooollldddd iiiiissss ssshhheeeee?" he repeated.

"Uh, um..."

I froze. Should I start to share important fact about my child with this stranger? What's next? Height, weight, social security number? He had one of those institutional haircuts, cut short and cemented to his head and he was getting closer to the cart. I was a good four feet away, getting whoozy from the cheap cologne he was wearing. Was this his plan? Forget the ammonia on the rag bit, just drench yourself in that stuff and let the women pass out on their own. Instinctively I jumped for the cart and yanked it to me with such force Chicky Baby dropped the container of puffs.

"Um, she's 15 months."

"Oooh, I haaavvve a twooo and a haaaalf year old at hoooome." Where? Locked in a secret cubby hole in your basement? I swear I saw him licking his lips.

Because she had dropped her sugar fix on the floor, Chicky started to whine. Loudly. And then, showing off her new toddler attitude, she started screeching. I was torn. Do I look away and grab the container to get her to stop screaming and risk Creepy Guy snatching my child away or let someone call DSS because some crazy woman was clearly beating her child? I had visions of our own Massachusetts version of Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb, stealing children and using their skin to make fine handbags. It puts the pacifier in the basket or else it gets the hose again...

As luck would have it I didn't have to choose between the Department of Social Services and becoming the Lifetime movie of the week. Creepy Guy took one look at my daughter's red face and the steam that was coming from her ears and slinked, yes slinked, away towards the exit without another word. I think that was the only time that I ever hugged my child for having a tantrum in public.

Thinking back on it I'm sure he was a very nice man with a young child at home that just wanted to make idle conversation with a stranger in the aisles of a department store while suffocating that stranger with the power of their cologne and mentally sizing up their child for his new wallet. But the next time you're in a department store and the scent of Polo wafts towards you, you'll think twice about letting your child out of arm's reach. You can thank me later.