Sidebar for Plaintiffs

Generally, I learn it’s Rosh Hashanah when a non-Jewish friend tells me, “Happy New Year.” I am always slightly startled but never displeased. Although I don’t celebrate, I do approve. The weather shifts make early autumn more New Yearish than January 1. So, yes, this is a new year.

Meanwhile, I was out on the streets of my neighborhood when I observed that there were many more babies in strollers than usual. Then, as I passed a local bar the doors of which open fully to the sidewalk, I saw…a lot of people half in and half out of the bar, holding babies.

I’m vague on the city drinking age but am certain it isn’t less than 1 year old. What was going on at that bar? A Babies Night, with special milk cocktails?

Now, if I were a scrupulous reporter, I would have gone into the bar and inquired, just to get the facts. Instead, I walked on, wondering. Often, wondering is more fun than facts.

More baby carriages! At the corner of 72nd Street and West End, where half the sidewalk has been chopped up for some purpose presumably constructive, the baby carriage situation became a veritable jam, and we all had to slow down to dodge them.

And there was another baby carriage, a large flat one, edging its way around me. It’s automatic for me to glance into baby carriages because seeing babies — maybe not in bars — is a treat. So I glanced down. And saw…a fur jacket. Now, my mind usually zips off into mental rants at people who walk their pets in carriages, but this was too too much. Walking a fur jacket in a carriage?

Then the jacket moved. So I went back to grousing about pets in carriages. It doesn’t bear repeating. (Although it seems I did repeat it, with that link, above.)