So Touching

I would have been here sooner had I not been derailed by a vid clip of Angelina Jolie at the premiere of her new movie. God, I love that kind of stuff. And watching TV on the computer rules. It feels—I dunno—private and sneaky. Oh la la! The two are just about to formally integrate. It's cool to witness the progress of a medium and how it affects the world. Hello, Fahrenheit 451. We (www.thefamilygroove.com) are going to be featuring video in 2007, too.

Anyway, I digress—and regress quite often for that matter. I am actually here to vent about touching. Copycat alert: I am completely biting off of the great Chelsea Kaplan's post on creepy peeps who touch her kid. (It's hysterical, by the way. Go to http://www.thefamilygroove.com/blogtoc.htm to read hers.) But I have to say that it is really a problem. Why do people think it's okay to touch my kid? And on her face, no less! Gross!

And here's the worst part: I'm too much of a wimp to say anything. So instead I sit there or stand there or do whatever it is I am doing there with a strained look on my face, body tense, breath held, until it stops. Then I let out an uncomfortable non-laugh laugh joined by an awkward smile and frantic head nodding, all in some kind of subversive attempt to frighten the toucher away.

Okay, now you are thinking that I am a total germaphobe. I'm not. I swear it. I mean I don't want my kid to get sick, but I'm no Howard Hughes (and neither is Lindsay Lohan). But seriously, hands off, people. I don't go around touching your faces.

Now there are about four places with known (to me) touchers and I have boycotted them. (Well, in my mind I boycott. In reality I just don't go there anymore.) I have no choice. Okay, I do have a choice. I could and should just nicely ask the people to please not touch my kid—with their dirty, germ-ridden, yuckers hands. But instead I avoid.

As I see it, I have two options. The first is to grow up and tell these people to kindly stop touching my child. The second is to reach out and touch them. How great? How great would it be if I just touched these randoms right on their faces for no good reason? Or if I just took someone's hand by his or her fingers and kind of loosely wagged it up and down? Yup, from now on, I am going to reach out and touch the touchers. How touching!