Originally posted on greenfairydotcom

There was a baby staring at me on the bus this afternoon for the entire hour-long journey.

Babies and small children stare at me all the time. I've no idea why, since I don't look particularly unusual most of the time (the turquoise hair is long gone), but for some reason they're fascinated by me. I've trained myself to automatically tune out children (and chuggers, and tramps yelling obscenities about my mother) in public places so I'm not always aware of it, but whenever I happen to be off guard in the presence of a child it's staring at me, unblinking. So it was with this kid today, an anonymous thing in one of those three wheeled mini-SUVs. I doubt I'd have noticed it at all, but it was wearing a grey knitted hat in the shape of a slug (complete with antenna) that I coveted intensely.

When cornered by a child in this fashion I like to pull a face that will ensure it years of expensive therapy to come, but not one that will get me escorted off the bus at the next stop. Currently sporting a jaw broken in two places this was always going to be difficult, but I heroically plumbed the depths of my bitter and barren soul and came up with something guaranteed to give it the screaming abdabs well into adolescence. I was stopped milliseconds before commencement however by the look it was giving me. Usually when they stare it's a keen yet ultimately vacant look, one common to all things they find diverting, but this kid was really looking at me, with narrowed eyes and a curled lip that said "I simplay can't imagine that you ever thought that top went with those trousers".

I recoiled in disquiet and consternation. The look probably meant nothing more than it was on the verge of doing something unspeakable that its mother will have to clear up, but I couldn't be one hundred percent sure its intentions were benevolent (if malodorous). I regrouped and came back with a sneer to match. It looked me up and down. I poked out my tongue. It furrowed its eyebrows in pity. Refusing to be beaten by a baby in a good hat, I began to plunder my stock of previously-expressed faces. I gave it the Ghengis Khan of Tottenham. It sighed deeply. I showed it the Linguine-Happy Undertaker. It rolled its eyes. I waggled the Nutcracker Doctor with Forceps, the Snickers Maker's Daughter and the There's Nothing Like A Dame in quick succession. It did nothing but start to examine its nails. I was limp, exhausted, defeated.

But just as its mother was manouvering monstrous buggy off the bus with baby over one shoulder, I had a last-gasp flash of inspiration and gave it the Hermetically-Sealed Elvis. It threw up all down her shoulder. Result.