Baavgai the puppy?

[baavgai]

I describe myself as basically looking like a giant Tolkien dwarf. Over six foot, over weight, over abundance of facial hair and hair in general. You get the idea, I blend in at many cons. I told you that to tell you this...

I have a strange problem, small children stare at me as if I were wearing a purple dinosaur suit. Tonight I was sitting in a book store, pouring over my stack of readables. Suddenly there's a small child in front of me, speaking. I realize he's been happily chirping "hi" several times before I was fully aware of him. His face is fully lit up as if he just caught a Disney character all alone on a smoke break.

I smile at him and warily saying "hello" just as an embarrassed, worried looking father shows up. "He's very social," mutters dad, picking up his son to presumably get him as far away from the big, scary white guy as possible. I say white guy, because dad and junior were Hindi. Was I mistaken for Santa? Maybe. Ganesh?

That's the really odd thing, the effect I have on very small kids seems to have nothing to do with culture. I had large, curious kid eyes of first generation Korean, Japanese, Indian, South American, Malaysian and others following me at the mall the other day.

To be clear, I don't generally pay that much attention to children except to not step on them. But when a small human is openly staring at you in slack jawed rapture, you notice. I have no idea why little kids seem to find me fascinating. I can be childlike in some ways; I often fancy some of them are thinking something like, "Damn, that's the biggest little kid I've ever seen."

I wonder if anyone else expiriences this kind of phenomena? I'll admit I'm kind of flattered that short people think I'm as entralling as a puppy. Still, I'd really like to know why.

Comments

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

LOL. Thanks :)