I hadn’t previously realised that having a small baby in public would invite so much unsolicited advice but, 15 weeks in, I can confirm it’s roughly equivalent to wearing a sandwich board saying ME FOUND BABY – WHAT NOW? Things aren’t helped by my face which, at rest, boasts such a gormless mien that even the most reasonable passer-by could be fooled into thinking I need assistance. “You don’t want to do that, by the way,” one woman said, apropos of nothing, while getting off the bus. We hadn’t been having a conversation and she was, in fact, a perfect stranger.
More perplexing still was the fact I wasn’t doing anything at the time so her abrupt disappearance, wreathed in the cocksure smile of someone who’s done their good deed for the day, meant I could never discern the meaning of her cheerily cryptic caution.
But worst of all – worse even than the woman who went from squeezing my son’s cheeks to threatening to throw his dummy on the ground so he’d never use “the disgusting thing” again – are those people my wife and I call Just You Waits.
Just You Waits are everywhere. Their function is to wait until you’ve expressed literally any opinion whatsoever on your own child, or parenting, and spool forth to say, “Just you wait!” They can be family, friends, or random strangers who decide you’re simply not prepared for whatever milestone they know to be around the corner.
The thing for which they are admonishing you can be anything, so long as it’s a more notable and important variety of experience than the one you’ve just mentioned, you sad, silly clown. Your child isn’t sleeping? Just you wait until they’re teething. Oh, his teeth are coming in? Well, just you wait for the walking! Walking, is he? Well, just you wait until he’s implicated in the murder of four hitch-hikers, their cases reopened due to devastatingly incriminating DNA evidence.
For the most part, this one-upmanship is entirely unintended, but mystifyingly prevalent. Do these people do it in other circumstances? “So sorry for your loss,” they’d offer at your mum’s wake, in between solemn mouthfuls of cheese-on-a-stick. “Still though, just you wait until your dad croaks, now that’s real pain.”
We have become masters at spotting a Just You Wait; the head tilt, the clasped hands, the pitying smile that betrays a desire to trump your experience with their own. Brushing away the stalactites of sleep in our eyes, we mark their words, and quietly plot their destruction.
If you do ever feel the urge to reply to an exhausted new parent describing experiences which are, for them, entirely new and noteworthy, don’t be alarmed if you find a dirty pacifier lodged in your eye. For the time being, my wife and I are remaining calm, but just you wait.
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