Ever since Ariana was born, I have taken notice of babies everywhere. I used to take it for granted that babies are cute. Babies are now conversation starters. I can gush about my own experiences and have a level of empathy that was previously not available to me.

Last night, at Barnes & Noble, I saw a baby. She must’ve been a newborn based on her size. As a father of a baby girl, other children now interest me a lot more. Without thinking, I approached the woman and her baby. I was naturally curious. The woman glared at me and pulled the baby carrier closer to her. Then she whisked her two other children out of the store quickly. I recalled a passage I had read in Armin Brott’s book, The Expectant Father:

I was pushing my daughter on the swing when he heard a little girl start to scream. She was a few feet away teetering on the tsmall platform at the top of a long, steep slide. As I watched, she began to fall. Without thinking, I steped over to the slide, caught the girl and set her down on the sand. I knelt down and was about to ask her if she was all right, when a woman picked the girl up, gave me a withering look, and hustled the child away. “Didn’t I tell you not to talk to strange men in the park?” the woman asked her daughter, glaring over her sholder at me. “Did he hurt you?”

I wondered what she had been thinking. Hadn’t she seen me playing with a happy girl who called me Daddy? As I looked around the park, I realized I was the only man there. And then it hit me: she hadn’t seen me at all. Instead, she’d seen what years of media images had trained her to see: the stereotyped image of a man in the park, menacing and solitary.

At first, I was appalled. Then I realized that she saw what the woman in the park saw. As a child, police officers came to the school to talk to us about strangers. We were shown videotapes about how to stay safe. They always depicted a man lurking behind the bushes or trying to lure children into his car. They all seem to have mustaches and drive vans without windows. Renee was even afraid of vans as a small girl.

As a dad who wants to step things up and defy the stereotypes, you will encounter the above described scenario. I simply choose not to waste my time with such people, nor will I waste my energy fretting about it. There are plenty of people in my life who are enlightened, enlightening, spiritually fulfilling, and intellectually stimulating. I spend my energy expressing my gratitude for that. It pays better than ranting.