Ten People Your Baby Will Make You Hate

1. People who make plans to come over and show up late. They ask what time works for you; you say noon. At noon, the baby is up and the house is clean and you’ve had enough coffee to deal with life. Then they show up at two, when the baby is napping, there’s Tupperware strewn about, and you’re hitting your mid-day slump. Awesome, we should do this again soon.

2. People who put out cigarettes in parks. You know who loves picking up everything off the ground? Babies. You know who puts everything they pick up in their mouths? Babies.

3. Mid-day delivery people. Why must you knock so loudly? Do you think these modest row houses are secretly mansions, and we can’t hear you because we’re in the west wing? Please, for the love of naps, just knock gently.

4. Evening solicitors. We’re not joining the church, we don’t need you to check the furnace, and we’re not interested in your chocolate-covered almonds. We cannot understand why you are banging on our doors at 9:00 p.m. when our babies are sleeping. Go home.

5. People who put their garbage cans in the middle of the sidewalk on garbage day. Thanks, bud. There’s nothing we love more than having to haul our strollers out into the street to get around your trash bin. How about putting it at the end of your walkway next time, like the rest of the civilized world?

6. People who don’t have accessible entrances. Hey, store owner. We want your coffee/your cute accessories/your cool furniture, we really do. But we don’t want it badly enough to drag our strollers up your stupid, annoying steps. Get it together.

7. People who set off fireworks after 8:00 p.m. on stat holidays. Fuck you, people. We spend the entire duration of your pyromaniacal fun praying the POW POW POW doesn’t wake our baby and throw off our sleep schedule.

8. People who wear strong perfume. Yes, you, old lady wearing Elizabeth Taylor’s “White Diamonds.” Thanks to you we have to hose our babies down because you hugged them and now they’re making us gag.

9. People (babies) who bite/hit/pinch/kick your kid. In our heads, we know that the biter/hitter/pincher/kicker in question is literally just a baby, but in our hearts, we still hate them a little bit.

10. People who don’t give up their seat on public transit to pregnant women. Don’t pretend you don’t see that poor lady with her swollen belly, holding her lower back. Her pelvis probably feels like it’s about to implode and her equilibrium is totally messed up due to the giant ball of human attached to her front side. But, yeah, don’t bother getting up.