Would you ever go up to a baby in a pram and touch it without the parent's permission? This is about my friend from childhood. She has always been very dominant - telling me what to do all the time and me finding it difficult or impossible to answer her back. If it were not for the fact that she is now the only person with whom I have shared memories of our time growing up in our home town I probably wouldn't choose her for a friend.
Yesterday I was at an evening event with her. We were queuing up for refreshments when she went up to a baby in a pram. I think the child was probably a couple of weeks old. It was just lying in its pram, looking at what was going on - not crying. Without asking the parents' permission she put her hand on it and gently rubbed its chest and abdomen saying ''Poor baby, you want to be at home in your cot, don't you?" I didn't see the parents' reaction because there was such a crush of people. But I thought it was not only wrong in general for her to do this, but maybe she could have done the baby harm if it had some medical problem or had just had an operation or something that she couldn't possibly know about. She was clearly very disapproving of the fact that the parents had such a young baby out with them in the evening.
But, because of how my relationship with my friend seems to work I felt unable to say anything to her about it.
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