Earlier this week, friend A and I meet up with our friend B. Friend B and his wife had a child a couple of months ago and this was our first chance to hang out. This was friend B’s first child, so I went fully prepared for a whole lot baby baby blah blah talk. I can’t say that I even minded. I was even looking forward to seeing friend B and wanted to hear how wife and baby baby blah blah were doing.

To friend B’s credit, even though this is his first child, he managed to share the perfect amount of baby baby blah blah talk. I fully expected him to share every mundane detail of the joys of parenthood and to rattle incessantly about his little bundle of snot. Much to my amazement, he didn’t do this. He found a way to share the changes in his life in a manner that neither bored or irritated me. If you ask me, I think friend B is a genius; a true man among men.

Friend A was so dazzled by friend B’s stories, that he actually got it into his head that he actually wanted to see the child. Of course this would have been innocent enough, had he not somehow gotten me wrapped up in his silly little plan, loudly proclaiming “Oh, we’ve got go come up and see the child! Adam, what day is good for you to go see the child?” (In friend A’s defense, he had a couple of scotches in him and wasn’t thinking clearly)

Meanwhile, I’m shaking my head at him, my eyes filled with panic and dread and trying to shut him up while kicking him under the table. Friend B turns towards me and asks, “When would you like to come up and see the baby?”

This left me with three options:

a) Quickly come up with a good lie to get me out of going to Owings Mills to stare at a baby. Of course, this would have been too smart for me, so I opted against this one.
b) Relent. Bite my tongue. Capitulate. Agree and suffer the agony of staring at a child. Um, no... How far a drive is it to Owings Mills anyway? Five... Six hours? If I’m going to bother traveling that far away from home, I might as well visit Manhattan, right?
c) Shaking my head, admitting the truth, and telling friend B that that I didn’t really have any interest in seeing his child, all the while staring into his hurt new daddy eyes. Yep, you guessed it, this is the option I chose.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! As much as of a genius as friend B is, he is still a human being. Friend B’s hurt puppy dog eyes nearly killed me.

One of these days, friend A, one of these days. I’m going to get you back for that one.