If looks could chill

Okay, you’ve seen the thing about baby slings? Something about size and construction and if you use it the wrong way, your baby could get smushed. Serious stuff. And considering how many parents I know who are just really in love with the sling thing, it’s probably causing some major anxiety for a lot of people.

But here is the thing that I have learned in the couple of months since my nephew was born – I will NOT be mentioning it to my sister. Oh, yeah, she got several as baby gifts and hand-me-downs. But she’s been told. Many times. By many people. There is an immediate need for people to e-mail, call and clip newspaper columns to give the new mom. Need? It’s a compulsion. And if I open my pie hole, I will get THE LOOK.

My sister has been a teacher for years. She worked childcare through college. She’s been a stepmother for several years. Her ability to give the skunk eye has been honed to a laser-like clarity. She could stop a volcano in its tracks. Pacific islands could employ her to stand on their shores, and at the first sign of a tsunami, she could train one eye on the horizon and emit such a ray of stink – ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT – show’s over, folks, you may return to the beach.

Usually, she’s far to polite to train this secret weapon on other adults (usually). But I, her beloved sister, she has no hesitancy about boring a hole into my brain with one terrible look. Especially should I feel the need to convey information that she’s had to sit politely through 50 times in the last hour by people who’ve felt the need to WARN the new mother.

So, I keep my little bits of trivia to items both obscure and humorous. Like the article I saw in the NY Times about parents who use the Dog Whisperer’s techniques to train their children. Okay, perhaps not all that useful. And I did get a little bit of the eye for it. But totally worth it to see the look on her face.