panic in a server station

        I see him coming towards me.The head chef. I am at one of my many part time jobs. This one happens to be a 'friendly' neighborhood bar and grill. Those of us that work here know otherwise. If you have ever worked in the restaurant business you know that they are cesspools for gossip, catty behavior, and bad-sometimes skeevy and unqualified-management. Not all but most, I would say,are riddled with high skill level social situations, a dimension of my own personal hell as I am lacking in traditional social skills. Not bereft, mind you, just not very svelte. I digress.
          He's walking towards me. We shall call him K. in the milliseconds before we make personal space bubble bumping, I feel a sense of dread. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is that I know about him that makes me feel this way until he is too close to pretend I am busy getting a refill for someone, or something, anything. My mind makes the necessary links between my dread and the information behind it, finally. His wife has recently had a baby. Dear god, no wonder my baby radar set off the alarm! It's just tricky-er with boys since they don't get the baby 'glow'. (This is a phenomenon where the average persons brains are so addled with evolutionary ticks that they mistake spit up, the wild eyed look of sleep deprivation, and a lack of showering for an attractive maternal aura).
       So he's here, opening his mouth and I am trying to calculate the likelihood that his first words will be baby related, since all people with babies really want to talk about is of course, their offspring, against how much social prowess he contains. It may be that he will take the trickier route and ask me something about my sister, whom he knows and likes better than myself as they used to work together and she is incapable of being unliked. I try not to hold it against her since I actually do like her, but maybe I should dislike her, just to break the trend. I decide on the more indirect route and this is why. My sister has also just had a baby. And for baby people, others babys are their second favorite topic because 1) they are in the general topic of babies yay! 2) it is a clear conversational pathway to talking about their own babies and 3) they can then compare babies and either gloat at the sheer superiority of their babies development or pinpoint things to work on so that in the near future they can gloat about their babies superior development.
       So this is what he says:' Hey Little owl how are you? How's your sister? When did she have her baby again?" I swear to god. I really wish I would be proven wrong just once, about this whole baby thing. So I give him the necessary information to make him happy and try to get the disappointed boredom off my face, a challenge I have had for many years, not just with disappointed boredom but with many an emotion that I should probably hide. I know I am not the only one with this problem, but with me, my face is a little to expressive to begin with, so the problem is not always with how strongly I am feeling about something, but with how much of it i allow to reside on my face. Being as I am also slightly sarcastic, this combination can be quite a pickle.
      I am not going to bore you with the details of the conversation from this point. I am sure you can fill it in. All I can say is if you are like me and sick an tired of all this baby crap, it can be quite amusing to deftly steer the conversation away from the inevitable and see what creative ways people come up with to turn it back in favor of babies. This can also provide much entertainment with people of devout religion, since they at least are crudely trained to manipulate conversations. It can be a jolly good time.
      Close to the end of our little chat about all manner of babies out comes one of the most annoying phrases ever known to man. 'I have a some pictures, do you want to see them?'. To this, it is universally known that ones answer must, at all times, upon pain of social stigmas forever, an enthusiastic 'yes!'. This can either be a golden opportunity or a sinking ship of despair.My job no longer is to listen, as he has stopped talking to look through pictures in his phone. Now, my sole focus in the break of eye contact, is to intensely search fro someone to fob off this blithering idiot onto. It takes some practise, but I have been in many a blithering idiot situation with pictures and so I will impart some of my extensive knowledge on the subject. I am almost certain to have to look at at least one maybe two pictures that look almost identical and do not require the lengthy explanation they are proffered with. But in order to avoid enduring endless photos of the same child doing the same thing over and over again I do the only thing one can really do. I call out for a hapless woman, it doesn't matter who, it matters only that  she is a female and under the same supposition that I am(that her sole joy in life is to be interested in very small people), and say 'Come(for gods sake come!) look at K's new baby, Isn't that cute? Awww....And in the shuffle of bodies, make extra sure that someone ELSE is in prime viewing position. Now this is still a precarious situation as I may be sucked back in unwillingly at any moment. So the more the merrier. Call as many women over as possible and success shall be mine, I'm sure of it.
        So that is precisely what I did. thank god. A happy ending to a story with a precarious beginning and a gruesome outlook. That's all anyone can really ask for. I relate this cautionary tale(stay away from those who are procreating) not to judge harshly but to bring to attention some of the things that ordinary people do unknowingly. We must forgive them because they have children and this means that a good portion of their daily goings on really suck, no matter how much they supposedly love parenthood. I just wish they wouldn't be so obsessed. They are as obsessed with their kids as I am with my dog.
    She's awesome. Want to see pictures?......