When confronted with a delicious and beautiful infant of indeterminate sex (see picture above), a passerby who wishes to compliment the baby has several choices confronting him/her. He/she may:
(a) avoid pronouns; i.e. What a beautiful child! or How darling! You must be so proud.
(b) ask outright; i.e. So lovely! Is this beautiful baby a boy or a girl?
(c) take a stab based on the clothing and possibly be corrected; i.e. She’s a sweet little thing – oh, I’m sorry, he is a handsome little man.
OR, one can take the approach of the kindly older gentleman cashier at our local bookstore, where I went to buy Jack’s first-month-birthday book (he gets a book for each month-birthday until he’s 24 months – that will get our kid library up and running!):
The Exchange
ME (holding Jack in one arm and wrestling out my wallet with the other): I’ll take Puff the Magic Dragon please.
CASHIER: What a beautiful baby! She is so cute.
ME (smiling): Thank you! We love him a lot.
CASHIER: How old is she?
ME: He is about 4 weeks old. I’m buying him a one month birthday present.
CASHIER: How sweet! What’s her name?
ME: His name is Jack. We named him after his great grandfather.
CASHIER: Jack, huh? Jack. Wow, that’s an interesting name for a girl.
OTHER CASHIER WHO HAS BEEN WATCHING THE WHOLE EXCHANGE WHILE SNICKERING INTO HER SLEEVE: It’s a boy, Sam. Look at his little blue outfit. It’s a little boy.
CASHIER: Oh! A little boy! Well that makes more sense. I hope I didn’t offend the little mite!
ME: You did, jackass, now he’s going to be scarred for life. Thanks a lot.
(Just kidding)
ME: Of course you didn’t. He’s 4 weeks old, he can’t understand English! <under my breath> and neither, apparently, can you, but you’re old and nice so I forgive you. <louder> Have a great day!
Poor old dude 🙂
I\’m a pronoun-avoider, they\’re all cute peanuts to me!
http://www.stthomasblog.com
lol…seroiusly i can\’t stop laughing…some people are just so stupid…
♥~♥ :oD the shortest distance between two people is a smile… :oD ♥~♥
I\’ve been there on that one, it\’s amazing how clueless some people are.