The Antisocial-Media App

A few weeks ago, I was in a café across the street from my house, having just put in an order for the first cappuccino of the day, when a woman walked in with her young son. I recognized him as one of the children who is regularly looked after by the same child minder as my own son. The woman, on the other hand, I had never seen before. The boy obviously recognized me, too, because as his mother was placing her coffee order he smiled up at me and said hello. I returned the greeting, using his name, and felt immediately awkward, because as far as his mother was concerned I was just some random man she’d never laid eyes on. Instead of simply leaving that ambiguous and faintly sinister note ringing in the air between us, I decided to tell her that her son and I knew each other from the child minder’s; but, flustered, I somehow managed to introduce myself to her as “Mike’s mum.” I tried to clarify that I was, of course, Mike’s dad, but the chat was by that point completely beyond salvage. We awaited our respective coffees in tense and complicated silence, before going our separate ways.

Read more on The New Yorker