Here is a little anecdote illustrating something that happens quite frequently to us as we live in the freakishly happy go lucky city that is San Francisco. And also it is a city with a lot of Immigrants and Hippies in it. People who may have survived Mao but missed out on that Tylenol scare in the early eighties. People who maybe have left the seclusion of whatever Longhaired Buddhist Hippie farm they have been living on for the past 15 years who may not realize that today's Modern Parent considers almost all strangers as threats to the children. People who have not formed opinions about how one interacts with society by watching violent crime shows on T.V. People who are nice but so utterly utterly clueless it is impossible to say, "No thank you, my son does not need to share your lunch with you sitting halfway down on the left side of this Muni bus.", without feeling like a great big party pooper.


You see, there is a certain type of person living in this city, probably living in a lot of different cities, who maybe have grand-children, who at least love children very much, who see no harm in reaching deep into their pockets or their purses, feeling around a little bit and then offering Austin whatever it is that they pull out. So far in his lifetime, Austin has recieved Haw Flakes, seaweed candy, throat lozenges, a steamed bun, a See's Vanilla lollypop, an opened airline-food-sized bag of Dorritos and an unopened arline-food-sized bag of chips.

I am purposely categorizing the hardhat, big yellow truck, the Lilo and Stitch bubble blower, the green small teddybear and the NASCAR teddybear seperately as they are non-food items and given to Austin by people of whom we may know perhaps his or her first name but not maybe his or her last name, where they are from or where they go when they are not drinking coffee in our neighborhood.

I am purposely leaving off this list the countless times old people have offered me packages of dried noodles or six packs of bottled water just because I gave him or her a seat on the subway or carried the laundry of a 200 year old man up the hill because Austin wasn't even there for them. Certain people can just sense that there is a kid involved somewhere. And then they start handing their stuff over.

So anyways, the anecdote. On Saturday morning, Austin and I were walking home from the farmer's market. We usually stop to play at a small lovely park that's filled with modern sculpture made by women artists. There is a big fountain and nice tiny rolling hills and fine trees. Austin was running up and down the hills, having just a fine time, when he decided what he really wanted to do was take his nap in the park. Er, what?

Uh, okay, we can take our nap in the park. Looking around I saw office worker types sitting around talking on their cell phones and tourists taking pictures. The occasional old person walking around. I thought if there ever was a park for a 3 year old to take a nap in, it would be this one. I also thought that when we got home, we would ask Austin's dad about this napping in the park thing as I am sure he is the sun loving, park napping bum who gave Austin the idea that this form of public camping is okay for a 3 year old.

So Austin and I find a sunny spot on the side of one of the tiny rolling hills and I lay out his jacket. He immediately lies down and I cover him with my jacket. Austin looks at some butterflies floating by and plays with some dried pine needles for a few minutes. He is almost asleep. I am enjoying the sunny park. And then this enormous man in a cheap suit with some sort of industrial grease all over his shirt walks on over and lies down next to me as if he and I have been friends forever and it is very normal to visit this way. As a Modern Parent, i start to freak out. Who is this man? What does he want? I get ready to run.

Lying on his side and rummaging through every pocket in his shirt, his sport coat and his pants, the man finally digs out a small stuffed walrus. " I would like to give this to your son", he says with perhaps a Central American accent. Nicaraguan, maybe? I can't think of a single reason why this would be bad, but I want to say no anyways. I don't have to because Austin rolls over and tells the man that he does not like walrusses.

Austin starts to drift off again but the man keeps talking. I don't know what he is saying really, talking about his own son, who is five, who loves Spiderman but is afraid of zombies. Something like that. The man goes on and on, so much so that Austin sits up and starts answering questions that this man is asking. He is asking the normal questions doting adults ask children, thank god. How old are you? What do you want to be for Halloween? blah blah bla.

And then suddenly, the man says, "Oh my God! Wait here! I HAVE SOME BALLOONS AT MY WORK!!" Austin is so excited by this! He looks at me with his eyes shining, as if to say this is the nicest man in the whole world! Oy Vey! I do not want to sit around waiting in this park for some strange man to waddle off to his work and bring back some greasy balloons for my son. So I say that Austin and I have to go somewhere to do...something. The man looks sad and again rifles around his millions of pockets and eventually pulls out a See's Vanilla Lollypop. Still very much in the wrapper. Not licked even once by anyone else.

I have to say I did admire the speed at which Austin reached around me and grabbed that lollypop. It was really fast. And then he unwrapped it even faster. This, by the way is a child who still insists that he is not able to operate a simple napkin at the dinner table. Yet curiously he was able to remove all three layers of wrapping on the pop in about three seconds and then shove it in his mouth before I could stop him. I counted to 10. Austin was still breathing and not suffering from any hallucinations, as far as I could tell. The man repeatedly waved goodbye to us as we left the park, like we were the closest of friends.

And we went home. Austin was happy and go lucky and actually skipped about 1/47th of the way up to our building, sucking on that pop the whole way. And I do not feel bad about any of this at all.

Have I ever mentioned that we do not own a T.V.?