Veritas

We made a quick trip to the library last night to return some books and check out some new ones. Samson got to play at the train table for a little bit, but he kept taking the train and banging it on the table, which drew some stern looks from the children's librarian so we moved on.

The gated toddler room, scene of previous strange encounters, did not disappoint last night. Although there were no feral two-year-olds or random outbursts of book licking. Last night's encounter came courtesy of the other adult in the area. This dad was sitting watching his son play on the slide and struck up a conversation with me about how great it was that the library had this area for kids, etc. All of which I replied to politely, but I'll be honest, I'm not really big on talking to strangers. Particularly strange men in rooms with little kids. I know, I know, he was the kid's dad, but even so.

I've long wished there were some universal hand sign for "please stop talking to me, you're making me uncomfortable." Kind of like the choking sign but infinitely more useful on a daily basis.

In any event, there was no way out of conversation with this guy, who looked like a combination of Buddy Holly and Michael Douglas in "Falling Down." He asked how old Samson was, and I said 13 months. He said his son was 2. He asked if Samson could walk, and I replied no. He then asked about crawling, and I said yes. Then, in what was a capstone to an already awkward conversation, he took out a picture of his son from his wallet to show me what his son looked like at 13 months. Mind you, this was the same son who was standing not four feet from us.

At this point, Samson is getting hungry and tired, and I'm just trying to grab some books without looking like I'm obviously trying to get away from this guy. I'm sure a more careful selection would not have yielded a book about vegetable soup, but it does have lots of bright colors. And besides, it could have been worse.

So we're finally ready to go, and the guy asks me what Sam's name is. For the briefest of moments, I actually thought about saying "Diego" because the guy was just so weird. But I could just picture Vicki at the library in the near future and this guy coming up to her and saying "oh, you must be Diego's mom."

So I told the truth, and damn the luck, his son's name is Sam as well. So we got to talk about that, and Samson versus Samuel [no contest, it's Samson in a walk every time].

If not for Vicki, I'm almost sure I would have lied. I once spent a year at my old gym answering to the name "Chris" because I'd missed the window of opportunity to inform a guy who worked out there that my name was not, in fact, Chris. I would actually sign up for the cardio machine with the name "Christian." [For some reason, I never felt like a Christopher].

But, of course, it might also have confused Samson. There's no telling what he recalls at this point. Which is not good, because in the middle of singing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" in the car yesterday this Chevy Gigundo (or whatever their school-bus sized SUV is called) cut us off. Without thinking, and in mid-song, I said "hey thanks, assface." Let's hope that's not something he thinks is part of the song.

In any event, we finally got through the gate and to the check out counter. I felt like Andy Dufresne.