Oscar

The walls to my office at work are transparent. No metaphor here. They truly are transparent.  Nearly all the offices and conference rooms have glass walls.

When I work at my computer my back is to the glass walls, lending one of my colleagues to opine that if anyone wanted to take a shot at me, I would be a sitting duck.

On Friday I was working at my computer when, at one point, I turned around and saw four of my colleagues looking into the office and staring at something on the other side of my desk outside of my range of vision.  They were looking into the office like people do at museums when they peer through the glass walls of an exhibit. Their faces reflected admiration and joy.

This was a new look for me. I've seen people glance into my office for the past two years but never that way.  All I could see from my vantage point was the chair positioned on the other side of my desk and the bare walls beyond it.  Again, I looked at my colleagues and saw, again, them staring delightfully and to some extent in awe of whatever it was that held their attention.

Then suddenly I saw this infant emerge from the other side of my desk and crawl toward the door.  I sort of leaped up from my chair, and the others laughed.  Oscar, the soon to be one year old son of one of my colleagues was crawling away towards his mother on the other side of the glass.

I knew Oscar before he was Oscar as he grew in his mom's belly.  I'd heard about Oscar once he was born from either my colleague or her husband, and was tickled to hear stories about his progress.  But I'd not seen him.

A handsome kid, Oscar.  And he was more fun by a factor of 12 watching him crawl around the office than anything else I had planned for the day.  The five of us stood in the hallway and watched him crawl this way and that,  run to his mother, smile, frown, and were even rapt when the kid drooled.  What a joy to behold.

Of course, easy for me, after a spell he started getting tired and perhaps a crying episode would have ensued.  And at one point there was a suggestion that he might need a changing.  But, still, watching Oscar crawl was as fine, if not better, than any exhibit one might witness through a glass wall in a display of art.