Things I didn't "get" until I had a kid of my own #8,712: "Baby On Board" signs. You hardly see them any more because after they were useful, they became a fad and then finally a joke:
I love ya George, but you're a bit of a dick on this one. The sign isn't there to tell other people that they should drive more carefully because I've got a kid on board, it's to explain why I'm driving more carefully.
I realized this the first time I drove by myself with Kayla. Itty bitty babies have delicate necks and no head control, so if you take a turn too fast their little heads whip back and forth. (And by "too fast" I mean normal speed by any other standards.) Too much of this can cause serious damage to an infant's neck, head and brain.
Until a few weeks ago I'd always had Robin in the car with me, so one of us would drive & the other would be in the back with baby to fix her head when needed. But this time I had to pull over twice in the first 15 minutes of my trip to fix her head after it flopped forward. I have those little pads that you prop on either side of baby's head to keep it from flopping around *too* much, but that only helps so much.
So after learning how slowly I had to take a turn to keep her head from flopping, I now had to deal with every driver behind me at every turn honking and yelling at me as they cut me off. At first I thought, "I should get one of those "Baby On Board" signs so they'd know why I was taking the turn so slowly... maybe then they'd chill the fuck out. Crap, did I just seriously consider that?" Then I thought, "No wait, even if I do that, they'll just think I'm an asshole a la George Carlin sketch." Finally I landed on, "Fuck these people, let 'em yell. Obviously they don't have kids. They wouldn't understand."
Yeah. I'm becoming one of *those* people. WHAT.
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