You can dress him up, but you can't take him out

I was at the park with my son — he was just a baby then, less than a year old, I guess — and I saw another new mother with her baby. The little one was barely old enough to crawl and was dressed in one of those long, neck-to-toe gowns. It was spotless white.

The mom put the baby down in the sand to play and then opened up her book. The baby, quite naturally, started scooching around looking for something to do.

After a minute or two, the mother looked up and saw what her baby was up to. By now the gown was pretty dirty, and of course bunched up past the baby’s diaper.

The mom started yelling at the baby. “Look at you! You’re a mess! How could you — oh, that’s it, we’re going home!”

This baby couldn’t have been more than seven or eight months old. I don’t know what amazed me more — that she brought him to a sand-intensive park in a white gown and expected him to stay clean, or that she really seemed to think he’d understand when she told him he’d done something “wrong.”