One of the weirder things about becoming a parent is that your emotions get re-calibrated in unpredictable ways. Things that you used to find cloying, you find cute. Cynicism fades and you become more ready to accept that there are things that are special and cute and silly. You start to enjoy pictures of other people's children clogging up your News Feed.
In some ways this is just Step #8 in the well-trod journey to becoming UnCool. Nothing new there. But there is one emotion that is new and, I think, not remarked upon enough: Kinderfreude.
That's probably terrible German. Like Schadenfreude, but a little different. Basically, since becoming a parent I take pleasure in watching other parents struggle with crying children. Kinderfreude.
I don't know if I should feel bad about it, I'm just being honest. It's sort of sympathy, sort of amusement, sort of hahaha. It's all mixed up. It's a little bit of "aw man, I've been there."
But I remember when I didn't have a kid, there was really only one way I felt about a crying, agitated child and their parent: "Please dear God shut up and get off this F Train." Now it's more complex. A few weeks ago, there was a litmus test moment: two dads and their kids got on the train and one of the kids suddenly threw up. People around me quickly moved out of the way, one kindly person gave them a huge stack of paper towels ("Work doesn't need all these paper towels like I do!"), and I sat there grinning. Aw man, sucks to be that guy!