Responsible Parenting

I walked past an abandoned baby on Friday outside the Millenaris theatre. It was worrying, the square was empty and there were only a handful of morose security guards on the other side of the door. I felt inept too, handicapped by a lack of experience with abandoned kids.
Still, I thought it was the least I could do to watch over it for a while.


I retreated to the edge of the square, perched on a wall and stayed there for around ten minutes. Just when it looked like nobody was going to do anything, a homeless man, bless his heart, took some responsibility. He came out of nowhere and pushed the little tyke off, hopefully to the police station. I walked away from the square, the sun on my face, feeling good about my role as a guardian angel.

The baby wasn't the only person I felt sorry for on Friday. I have a bad habit - when I ride on public transport I can't help staring at mean-looking people.

So, Friday afternoon, I was on a bus on the way back from the residency permit office, transfixed by a guy who seemed to want to fuck me up. I realised that he had been staring back for some time, and nervously, I tried to find something else, something less tough to stare at. An old lady, my own arms, a bus map, an advert, the wall, the buttons on my jacket. Still, I was unable to resist shooting shifty glances in his direction. He couldn't take his eyes off me.

We got to the final stop, Moric Zsigmond, and he looked at me toughly one last time, then turned around to reveal a Nike tick, tattooed on the back of his shaven head. Why? I was incredulous.

Anyway, I'm happy that those two incidents were separate. If not, I might have come across a dangerous-looking baby who likes to fuck people up, with a Nike tattoo on his head, abandoned. One of the more extreme results of irresponsible parenting, perhaps.