STIFF UPPER LIPS.

We often take our son Prithvy to restaurants for week end dinners.
He is 17 months old and has recently developed a penchant for literally running amok. He waddles normally while walking but as soon as he runs, our hearts begin to flutter as he is yet to achieve his balance. We run behind him to protect him from falls.
Whenever we are at a fancy restaurant, he won't be seated for long in his seat.He will pester me for taking him on an indoor stroll inside the restaurant.
He will carefully stop at each and every table and offer his smile. The patrons usually pinch his cheeks and smile back at him, often asking me about his name. A cursory polite conversation begins and often I end up giving my visiting card to them. Many people click his snaps to keep them in their pleasant memories. Prithvy obliges them, often cackling with laughter. Not even the hotel manager of the hotel would match his concern.
Last month we were at a temple, All the devotees were sitting on the floor praying fervently for their wishes. Prithvy surveyed the whole lot and roamed about, sitting in laps of people whom he liked. It was a random act but he gladdened everyone who smiled back at him.
Mansi asked me one day,
When would he learn to sit at his table? When would he stop running around in circles in the restaurant? When would he stop smiling at strangers?
I said that it was a short matter of time before he began to develop his social etiquette and emotional intelligence, worldly wise manners!
I wondered about our stiff upper lips.
We, as adults would never behave like him, smiling at strangers and mixing with them freely without a care in the world.
We always judge people.
We always suspect people and their motives.
We never trust our loved ones. We always doubt their actions even if they are good.
We have our own reasons and experiences too.
Sometimes, I wish we never grew up.
The world would not be such a paranoid one, then.


I