Working in an office with young, fertile people tends to have the unfortunate side effect of somebody, eventually, having a baby. In my particular office, the infrastructure department has a ratio of about 23 woman-4 men. This imbalance manifests itself through a number of things (PMS days, hot new male co-worker week, “I’m too fat for my bikini” month, “All my friends are married and I’m still single” life), but never is it more savagely present than when somebody has a baby.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find babies unexciting. I use that word, because if there’s a word that best communicated what women experience around babies is “excitement”. I’m not insensitive by any means, I congratulate the father/mother, and feel genuinely happy for them. The baby itself, as seen through pictures, is the “rather meh” part. I can see where the excitement comes from, I just can’t bring myself to drool over a picture of a baby. There’s plenty of anecdotal and scientific evidence that humans should find babies cute, lest they die, but it’s just not enough for me. Not only that, female reaction to this ranges from an angry glare, to “OMG, you’re so insensitive”, to “I hope you die, you heartless prick”. I don’t hate the baby, I hate what I perceive as a social necessity to drool over it in order to appear like an emotionally functional human being. Last time one of my male co-workers fell into the trap, and started “Oh”, and “Ah”-ing. I took him aside, and slapped some sense into him: “Stop making a fool of yourself. ACT LIKE A MAN!”. Is it unreasonable to expect men to maintain their composture at times like this? Or is this just another reason why I don’t have a girlfriend?

Yeah, I thought so too.