Barney as Dirge

Scene for a horror film I’ll never write:

Today in my office building, the magazine American Baby is holding yet another one of their misbegotten open calls for las cute chitlins. There’s nothing more depressing than happening upon an Upper East Side mother, collagen lips trembling (if botoxed forehead standing firm), bellowing at a weeping two-year-old when you duck into the ladies’. And on the elevator coming up from fetching the Egg Sandwich (capitalization mandatory), I got stuck with a very solemn woman, her tiny wide mom, and her tiny, wide baby girl, barely old enough to waddle. The mom was pushing a baby carriage that held not another baby but a boom box blasting Barney songs, to which the child swayed with a blank expression. Terrifying.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy