@tehawesome

This post is not about a wine shop.

It was going to be. I was going to take a photo of one, then write about it, but I couldn’t.

A lot of the writing I do comes from me finding something that inspires me, then taking a photo of it with my camera phone and writing about it later. I’ve done this quite a few times.

So, today I was walking through my neighborhood and I saw that a little stand up sign outside a local wine shop had fallen over. I wanted to take a photo of the sign on the ground, with the shop in the frame, and then write about how I wasn’t going to bother picking the sign up because of how the shop had annoyed me earlier. (I’d gone in there earlier to buy a bottle of champagne, but their cheapest bottle was like $20, so I went across the street to a Walgreens and got a bottle for much cheaper. The price difference seemed inexcusable.)

I figured I’d upload the photo, tell that story, then conclude the post with something like, “Hey wine shop, I’d pick up your dang sign, but your ridiculous prices were beaten by a place that also sells Snuggies and condoms.” That’d show ‘em.

So, I was standing there trying to get a shot so that the sign and the shop were in frame just right, when I noticed a woman standing in the background.

Now, I try not to include innocent bystanders in photos if I can, so I waited for her to walk away. But she was just standing there, holding what looked like a… pillow? Was she coming home after some kind of adult sleepover?

Wait, no, it was a baby. Babies look like pillows sometimes. Easy mistake to make. Whatever. But it looked like she was… checking the baby’s face? And how come I could see some of her neckline? Oh, hell.

She was breastfeeding.

I was about to take a photo of a woman breastfeeding.

I am a horrible person.

So, what do I do, then? Obviously, I put my phone away. First thing’s first.

But what if she’s not breastfeeding? What if she’s just, ya know, holding a baby and wearing a shirt that shows a little upper torso? Do I walk closer and check to be sure? No, that’s still creepy.

Do I just stand around and wait for her to stop maybe-breastfeeding? How would that work? What would I say if I bumped into someone I knew?

“Hey Henry, what’s up?”

“Oh, not much, friend. Just waiting for this woman to stop maybe nursing her baby so I can take a photo of this wine shop’s sign on the ground for my blog.”

“I am walking away and never speaking to you again.”

“Ok, bye.”

So I just walked home, kinda grumpy about that lady possibly providing nourishment to her child. Then I felt bad that I was grumpy about a woman maybe breastfeeding. How could I stay angry at a breastfeeding lady? It’s not like I could come home all sad, then when my girlfriend asked what was wrong I could stomp my feet and say, “A breastfeeding lady stopped me from taking a camera phone picture.”

If I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that breastfeeding women have yet to be used to their full potential.

Let’s say you run an art museum and you don’t want people taking photos of the art. You could just fill your museum with breastfeeding women. A person in the museum might say, “Oh wow, look at that statue.” Then when they get out their camera phone, one of the breastfeeding women standing next to the statue would glare at them and say, “Hey! Do you mind? I’m breastfeeding.” Then that person would shamefully put away their cell phone. “Sorry,” they’d say. “That was really creepy of me.”

Then you’d have this museum just full of paintings and statues and old vases and new mothers carrying babies. Soon all museums would copy your brilliant idea by hiring new moms to hang out near all the art. Eventually whenever people heard a baby cry, they’d think about art, because that’s what art museums now sounded like.

Anyway, I’m sorry this post wasn’t about a wine shop. I was going to take a photo of one, but then I couldn’t.