The Wrong Car

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Adelaida and I have a routine on days I take her to school, and a big part of that routine involves leaving her at school with a full stomach. Pumped breastmilk is hard to come by, so I want her to nurse as much as she can before school so that she takes fewer bottles while she is at school (thereby reducing the amount I have to pump). Since the drive to her school is about forty minutes, I generally nurse her before we leave, drive to school, and nurse her again in the car before I take her in to her classroom.

One Friday morning a few weeks ago, we arrived at school and I took Adelaida out of her carseat, then sat with her in the front passenger seat while she nursed. She had finished nursing on the left side and I had her sitting up on my lap to burp her when a man walked out of the school after dropping his child off. He walked out the door, walked to the driver side of my car, opened the car door, and sat down in the seat right next to me. I said something that I meant to be "excuse me, I think you might have the wrong car," but probably sounded more like "ummm -- what -- uh -- hi."

My speaking (garbled as it probably was) startled him and he looked at me, at my left breast (still hanging out of my shirt after the recent nursing), at Adelaida, then back to my left breast, and he said something that sounded to me like "oh -- uh -- sorry -- uh" (but was probably intended to be "oh, excuse me, I must have gotten in the wrong car. I'm so sorry to have bothered you").

He opened the car door and quickly walked away, toward his own silver small SUV that was parked next to mine, then returned to my car to close the door he had left open.

He was very pointedly looking down at the ground when he came back to close the door.

Adelaida seemed interested in this stranger and, as soon as he sat down in the car, she started waving to him (as in the video below) and making happy squeaky noises. She really has no fear of or anxiety about strangers!