So I’m sitting in my German class, trying to learn some German, and a baby starts screaming in the hallway. For the entire 2.5 hours we are in the building, this baby is screaming on and off. After about an hour and a half of this, mom-of-screaming-baby finally takes the baby outside of the building, but the way our classroom is set up, she was just outside of our window anyway. Possibly even louder from outside.

Okay, okay, I do NOT think that babies should be banned from public. And I’m sure it’s worse for the mom-of-screaming-baby than it is for us in class.

But all kinds of questions run through my mind:

Why is this woman hanging out with a cranky baby during classes? She can't be teaching or be a student with the amount of screaming that was going on. Why is the baby screaming so much anyway? When I've complained about how babies seem to cry all the time (I don't see much of babies except in restaurants, etc.), my father explained that they don't cry all the time, only when something is wrong (hungry, wet, tired, sick, etc.) So why is this baby screaming for a whole 2.5 hours?! (That's a legit question people, I'm not judging mom for not "fixing" what was making the baby cry, I'm just wondering why they do it.) When you are the mom-of-the-screaming-baby, do your mothering instincts kick in to make you able to deal with that? It makes me completely unable to concentrate, and also to want to put the baby in a dark place to see if it will quiet down (like a bird? that works on birds right??) I suppose, barring that, I would put the child in a soundproof room for a minute while I recover my sanity? Or is it just 100 times worse when you own the baby, because no matter whether you take it outside or stay inside, you will be the closest to the ear-splitting shrieks (and also possibly dying of shame as you imagine people like me thinking that you are not Doing Your Mom Job Right. Clarification: I do not think that.)

This post inspired by GrumpyRumbling’s post about considering a second child.

And also, I was tagged by FirstGenAmerican in the “7 Links” game, and I will put that together, just need to get home from work earlier one of these days!