The Parent Trap

Being a parent is a wonderful experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. However, there is one area of parenting that I've come to despise: parental small talk.

Whenever you're with your childrens in a public area, you're always in danger of falling into the trap. One minute you're happily pushing your urchin in swing without a care in the world. The next another parent has sidled up next to you and out of the blue asks, "How old is he?"

"Uh...nineteen months," you reply. Now you're in the quagmire of forced conversation. You don't really want to, but you feel obliged to ask about their little pride and joy:

"And how how old is he/she?"

It becomes really awkward from this point out. You really have nothing in common with this person other than the fact that you've both figured out how to successfully breed. I imagine moms are much better at this sort of this things than dads because they have more experience at it. I simply have no desire to "talk kids" with some complete stranger.

It's even worse when they open the exchange by paying your child a compliment:

"Wow, he's really a cute little guy."

What do you do now? For some reason it seems incumbent upon you to respond in kind, even though sometimes you want to be completely honest and say:

"Thanks and you have a lovely little troll there yourself."

But you don't. We're trying to have a civilization here, right? So you offer some insincere compliment of your own to even the score.

"Thanks, he/she is a little cutie too."

Then, you're again you're left with the same question of "where do we go from here?" and maybe more importantly "WHY?".

There's no reason for these painful social encounters. Just because I see you at the park/mall/store/whatever and our kids are in near proximity physically and age-wise doesn't mean that we need to communicate in any manner other than a shared glance, a knowing smile, and acknowledging nod of the head. Anything more is just going down a road that has no happy destination.