How to Get Smiled at by Strangers, for Dummies

When I was pregnant, I got my fair share of attention from strangers, like most pregnant women (even if at the end, because I never got that big, I kind of felt like I was getting less attention than I deserved!) When I would go to the grocery store or the bank or what have you, strangers would often smile at me and ask me when I was due, what I was having, if it was my first, etc. The one place this rarely happened was a place I mildly hate to shop but do anyway because, well, it's cheap: WalMart. Fat, cranky, trundling pregnant women are no rarity there--in fact they seem to be a large percentage of the shopping population (the shopulation?)--and when I was one of them, I joined the other preggies in fatly, crankily, trundling around, ignoring each other.

Now, though, I've apparently I've found the formula for getting smiled at by EVERY person shopping at WalMart: wearing Miss Scarlett, facing forward, in her Baby Bjorn. I did this yesterday because she's generally just intolerable in her carseat these days, a total pill who sticks out her bottom lip petulantly and squalls at the sheer injustice of being safely strapped into anything. She likes the Bjorn much better because she can observe everything and get noticed by everyone. And man, did she. All of a sudden, I noticed that almost everyone I passed smiled at us. Old ladies squeezed her toes and called her a dear (and one very old man called her a boy, but we won't worry about that.) People stopped me in the vegetable aisle to ask how old she was. Other new moms gave me conspiratorial smiles and how-cuted her, obliging me to how-cute their offspring reciprocally. I started to feel like I was in a Mentos commercial, or one for deodorant, or something.

At the risk of sounding like a misanthrope or cynic, I'm not actually sure I liked this experience. Unless I'm in a gregarious mood, I usually enjoy doing my shopping in my own world. And as great as it is to hear Squidge complimented, I'm not used to having to exercise my cheeks so much with all those conspiratorial little smiles when I'd rather be silently pondering dog biscuit brands. Plus, it's rather taxing to answer "thank you so much" when people say how cute she is, as opposed to "I know, isn't she?" which is the answer that comes to mind. (This is not 100% vain/proud mother. This is only 75% vain/proud mother and 25% thinking it's nothing I did to make her cute, she's just cute on her own, and she's a real little person, so feels more natural to agree with compliments than to accept them.)

Anyway, I'm guessing my days of antisocial shopping are over, at least until Miss Scarlett's old enough to join in the "Mommy I want THAT" chorus that is sure to turn all those what a cute baby grins into what a spoiled little BRAT! glares. Won't that be heaven?