It’s fall and that means it’s time to fight off the yearly cold that shows up around this time. I missed my baking post from last week due to the fact that while I wasn’t terribly under the weather, I was just tired enough that I kept telling myself I would “post it tomorrow”, and then the week was up. So I will be having two different baking posts this month! Not a bad thing with the holidays coming up.
Partially due to the fact that I’ve been tired we have a pretty short short story this week, called “Baby Bump”. I thought the idea was cute so I hope you all enjoy it as well!
Baby Bump:
The baby wanted a fist bump.
“This is surreal”, Zora thought, standing in the middle of the self-check out lanes of her local Walmart.
She’d rushed up to the self-checkout section to buy her cup noodle and new socks before the grey sky outside finally unleashed the rain that had been threatening all day. She’d scanned, bagged, and paid for her necessities with no problem. It was as she was making her way to the doors out that the encounter happened.
The boy must have been eight months, sitting solemnly in the front of the cart as his mom checked out at her own self service station. Chubby cheeked with a button nose, he was adorable in his puffy green coat and navy knit cap, topped with a giant white pom pom. He was watching the other busy shoppers with a serious expression, like a lord observing his domain.
The encounter started normal. He’d waved at her as she approached his cart and she had waved back – blame it on six years of babysitting and three years working at a day care. You don’t leave a kid that cute hanging when they say a silent “hi”. And then he’d just extended his little fist with the same serious expression in the universal sign of the fist bump and she’d been brought up short.
Zora hesitated. Waving was one thing but would it be weird for a full-grown woman to fist bump an eight month old?
The kid didn’t move, little fist still held out, expression serious.
Waiting.
Well, if she couldn’t pass up a wave then passing up a fist bump had to be some sort of crime.
Slowly, and a little hesitantly, she extended her own hand until she just barely bumped knuckles with the toddler. Apparently that was enough for him because he immediately dropped his hand and turned back to observing the store – or staring into space, working out very complicated baby thoughts.
Zora blinked, then shook herself, flipping up the hood on her windbreaker and began walking briskly for the doors. The sky outside was getting darker by the minute and if she was lucky she could make it to the bus stop before it really started to rain.
