(diaryland) July 1, 2000 - 16:07:47

The ugly baby was already on the bus when I got on. I sat near it by accident. I didn't know it was there.

The ugly baby was sitting on its mother's knee. It tried to look at everything with its stretched open eyes. It had wrinkly barely-there orange eyebrows. It had enormous wet cheeks that came off its face like huge breasts. Like its mother, it had a receding chin, but unlike its mother, the chin was perpetually screwed up and covered in slobber. The baby had a lot of slobber.

A couple got onto the bus and sat opposite the baby. The baby looked at them with its stretchy eyeballs and the mother was proud that the baby was looking at them blankly and she smiled at them too. One of the couple had extremely pointy blond hair, and the mother said, "he likes your cool hair." The baby did not like his cool hair. The baby just needed to see everything. The baby then looked at the other guy, and so did the mother. The guy the baby was looking at was telling the pointy blond guy not to start arguing on the bus. The mother continued to smile at them. She even turned the baby around on her knee so that the baby could get a better view of the quietly bickering couple.

The baby then turned its attentions to me. I didn't want it looking at me. The baby said, "mmmmmmmmmuu", and the mother said, "I know." I wanted the baby to stop looking at me. I felt a barely stoppable urge to pull out a pin and pop its cheeks. Who knew what would have happened if I actually did have a pin? Well - I do know. I wouldn't have popped its cheeks, because I'd be arrested, and I don't like that.

So I did the next best thing. I stretched my eyes wide open at it in the vain hope that it might understand that I was mocking it. My eyes are very bulbous so the effect when I open my eyes wide is kinda spectacular. Otherwise, if it didn't understand I was mocking it, it might at least try to make its own eyes outstretch my own and then perhaps they might fall out.

But, no. It watched me and said, "mm mmmulllllaa maa." I stopped my eye gymnastics because I decided it made the baby like me more plus I didn't want the mother to find out. The mother made faltering conversation with the couple. I looked out at the window at all the people wearing football scarves running across the road.