Daddy feeds baby

I was feeding my daughter at a restaurant recently and a family at another table was watching as if we were dinner theatre. My wife was eating and talking to a friend of ours. I was a part of the conversation, but was spooning in the apple/pear babyfood while deftly dodging waving baby hands. No big deal. When we are out I like to give Erin a break and let her eat in peace since she has Maddie a lot while I am working with clients during the day. However, even after the 80’s and 90’s sensitive-pony-tail-quiche-eating-yet-somehow-still-manly revolution, people are amazed at a father taking care of a baby – in public, no less! Now, if your wife is dead then it’s a different story – very much akin to how a blind person’s other senses heighten to make up for the lack of sight. A widowed father channels the ghost of a British nanny, and people don’t think twice about it. Erin, as evidenced by the hearty whacks in the arm I get for bad humor told too loudly in public, is not deceased. And yet, I’ve never accidentally fed my daughter the mexican hot salsa, or left the cudgel sized steakhouse knife within her reach at the local House of Meat. I’m actually getting worried that I’ll be turned in to some citizen’s action coalition for disrupting the American way of life. I mean, really, how’s a man supposed to swill beer and wave the flag with a half masticated soggy french fry on his shoulder?