Stereotyping the Unvaccinated

Rushing in for a potty touchdown. She scores!!

Saturday I went to my friend Jenny's house for pulled pork sandwiches. Kingsley was playing in the living room with Jenny's daughter, and she called for me to take her to the bathroom. I moved with the kind of speed a football player has when charging for the goal line.

I had to move quickly because I didn't want a repeat of Kingsley peeing all over their staircase, which occurred the year earlier when we started potty training. After my daughter peed on Jenny's stairs, I had a moment of horror, thinking, "This is why I should never leave the house!" and then I said I would clean up the mess. Jenny is a clean freak, and knowing that I could never live up to her expectation of how clean it should be, or her inability to oversee the cleaning and make sure it is done to her standards, she said she wanted to clean it up.

After I took Kingsley to the toilet, she ran back to the living room to go play with Jenny's daughter. I washed my hands and headed back too. Jenny was standing in the entry to the kitchen. She was holding a little bottle of antibacterial hand gel. The skin on the bridge of her nose scrunched up as she asked, "Do you mind?"

I attributed the extra germ cautiousness to her daughter's recent surgery where tubes were put in her ears. I said, "Not at all! Go ahead. I just washed them, but a little extra cleaning won't hurt."

She laughed, "That was so fast, how could you have washed your hands that quickly?"

I walked away rubbing my hands together as I mulled over that last comment. She might have asked me to use the antibacterial hand gel because she thinks I am a disgusting non-hand-washing-after-peeing-person not because she is a clean freak who is being extra cautious her kid doesn't get sick.

I said, "Oh, fuck it!" to myself and moved on to staring at my kids playing.

Jenny and I talked about the measles outbreak. She is expecting a baby in a month, and worries she won't be able to go to the East Coast to see her family because babies don't start their MMR vaccine until they hit 1 year old. She believes public space are now compromised, limiting the way families with a newborn baby behave. She is a scientist so I consider her opinion on this matter to be well informed and relevant.

Another friend of mine, Kali, a nonstop talking hairdresser in the same mom's group as me, told me she only takes her kids to Chuck E Cheese in the sketchy part of town. She figures the freaky kid weirdos would go to Chuck E Cheese in the affluent suburbs where the kids maintain that desirable J Crew catalog look.

Similarly, it is rich people on stupid pills who decided to stop vaccinating their kids, so its best to steer clear of places these people go. Expensive family music class, the gym daycare, art classes at the museum; are probably bad places to bring a baby under a year old, or maybe even their older sibling.  

Today when I was at music class and I watched the overly hipster babies, Finn and Sawyer, I worried. They seem unvaccinated. Last week, their mom breast fed the younger brother for 30 minutes during class, and the older one stood beside looking on and crying in jealousy. I am stereotyping, but I think this is the way an unvaccinated child acts. All I can do is buy antibacterial gel, and hope for the best.