Baby on Board

A few years ago, my priorities were different.  I was car shopping and a little bird was sitting on my shoulder trying to persuade me to consider the super fly cadillac that was going to speed the bird and I into the sunset.  Sure, I wanted to speed into the sunset, happily ever after, but being the eternally practical gal that I am; I had but one concern of my future car:  Could it respectably hold a baby seat?  Now, most cars will accommodate a car seat, I know.  Call me snobby, but I find it slightly depressing to see a car seat in the back of a mustang.  That tells me, someone didn't plan ahead.  A car seat in the back of a Delta 88 makes me even sadder.  I see that car seat and I can imagine the sticky carpet, the broken window units, the too many pets.  A Corolla holding a car seat makes me feel a little better, sensible parents, frugal with money...unless said Corolla has a light kit on the bottom; then I see that car seat sitting in the litter scattered front yard of their meth house.  But a car seat in the back of a Cadillac, somehow just didn't fit.  Luxury doesn't go with parenthood.  The cavernous backseat of the sedan should see formal wear, not garanimals.  Designer bags, not binkies.  Sequins, not crumbs.

But, in the interest of that sunset, I chose the Cadillac anyway.  Unfortunately, that sunset I was speeding towards turned into a giant ball of fire and I had to change directions.  Luckily, the V8 engine got me away in a hurry!  On my way out of Dodge, my backseat held taped together moving boxes.  As I furnished my new nest, it held awkwardly shaped furniture.  As I made a home, the backseat housed flat upon flat of petunias and large bags of soil (with a protective sheet, of course).  That backseat has even held a mental patient.  Pretty much the only two things I never dreamed would be in that seat were several bags of cash and a babyseat.

Until now.  Irony is funny.  I learned yesterday that in the course of my job, it would be necessary for me to transport kids at times.  When this was going around the meeting table, I quickly stated that I could not transport anyone under the age of 8, because I had no safety apparatus.  No car seat.  No booster seat (as a side note:  boy, times sure have changed! I would have DIED if my mom had strapped me into a "booster seat" when I was eight.  Of course, the whole idea is preventing death, but I came up in a time when children were being thrown all over the station wagon).   "Oh, no problem!", I was informed.  My social service agency has PLENTY of car seats available for my use. 

So, it has come to this.  Three years to the month of purchasing my happy fun time luxury vehicle, I am once again revisited by the car seat dilemma.  Just when you think you can relax and quit worrying, the same old niggling issues come back...in altered form.  It seems to be the universe's way of saying, "Look, you can't go your whole life without coming into contact with small humans...if you keep putting this off, the situations are just going to get weirder."  What's next?  If I avoid this brush with babies, the next thing will be that I take to selling used car seats on the side of the road?  Why can't the car seats just leave me alone?  I made my choice, right?  I chose instant happiness (yeah, that worked out) over long range planning.  Yet, it seems that if something is supposed to happen, it is going to happen so I might as well take my medicine now to stave off even more bizarre scenarios.  It would appear that my control over a situation seems to subside the more I put it off. 

Not to mention the fact that I have no idea how to transport kids.  All I have to draw on is my own experience.  Positioning myself on the little hump in the back so that I could rest my elbows on the front seat armrest; thereby not missing one second of conversation between the front seat riders (my mom and my older brother).  Singing into the speakers housed above the backseat because I believed that if I sung loud enough it would come through the radio and I would be "discovered" for the amazingly talented child star that I believed myself to be.  Biting the soft/hard dashboard because I liked to see my teeth indentions and because it upset my mother.  What do kids listen to on the radio?  What do we talk about?  Do we talk at all?  What if someone pees?  What if I am transporting older kids and I glance into the mirror to catch them rolling their eyes at me?  What if I accidentally let a "MOVE YOUR ASS MORON!" slip?? 

If this brush with carseats has taught me anything, it has taught me not to be so quick to judge.  Maybe that Mustang driver is a social worker, like me, carting some kids away from Hell.  One way to tell is to check the front passenger seat for overstuffed notebooks and loose papers.  Maybe a mileage form.  And while I am browsing other people's rides, I may have forgotten my own cargo.  I will now have that weird moment of panic whenever I leave my car, "WHERE'S THE BABY? DID I LEAVE THE BABY?".  

The Baby on Board just spit up all over my neat little well planned life.