portrait of a
babywearing addict
|by Ryan A. Bell
“Could you email Kokoro at exactly 12:15 the
capitalized words ‘BAUHAUS PERISCOPE’
and make certain that they’re hash tagged
along with my @LynnyMae account? They’re
selling a unicorn hand-dyed hand woven that
Coconut Robot wants and will trade the…”
I have NO idea what my wife is talking about.
After I reach in my pocket to pull out my
phone I stare at the calendar thinking about
my noon appointment with the CEO of TMobile. I know, deep in my heart, that I’ll have
an email open and ready to send as I negotiate
a deal that will matter on a much larger scale.
I am the blind-eyed enabler to a wrap junky.
Lynette has a problem. She is a babywearing
addict. She is a member of roughly 285 babywearing Facebook groups, made the Babywearing Periscopers group and our home has
two locations showcasing wraps… along with
the “emergency wrap” in the car.
The problem started with the lies…
“Honey,” I remember saying. “How many
wraps do you own?”
“About seven,” she replied… her eyes darting
around the room towards three draped across
the arm of our red sofa.
I looked at the seven wraps hanging near the
door and thought of the shelf in the bedroom
and then my innocent question turned into a
fight…
“Some of them aren’t even mine,” her voice
went into a higher pitch.
The words rang in my head like an old Just
Say No to Drugs commercial. She’s in denial.
I check to see if her pants are on fire. They are
not. Apparently she is covering well.
“… And I’m selling like four of them.”
I’ve still not
spoken a word
and she goes
into the justification.
“It’s not like they lose
value or anything,” she
continues feverishly.
“People want them,
so most of the time
I make money. You
should really think of
it like a bank.”
“It’s not like
they lose value
or anything,”
she continues
feverishly. “People want them, so most of the
time I make money. You should really think
of it like a bank.”
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