i think i can, i think i can

Visiting my cousin last night, I was caught off guard and asked if I wanted to read to their year and a half old daughter.  Ok, I have to admit, I was happy to give it a shot.  I have noticed that just smiling at her hasn't won me a whole lot of trust or favor.  She still looks at me with apprehension.  I'm nervous about these things though.  I don't know if I can read a children's book right, and babies can be pretty judgmental.

I joke, but I was nervous about it.  In order to read in proper entertaining fashion while keeping track of what she was doing required my full attention, to such an extent that it felt like being on autopilot.  I had nothing to spare for my precious default mode network.  I realized that this itself makes me very nervous.  It wasn't really just that I was afraid of being judged, but that without the familiar hypervigilance of ego, I wasn't entirely sure what I'd do.  Hopefully, I'd just read to her like a normal human being, but with this human brain thing, you never really know.

So, it was a little shocking to discover that I pretty much just read to her like a normal human being.  She seemed content, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do when we got to the end of the book, so I read her a second book.  At one point, I noticed that she was distracted and kept looking up, so wondering what she keeps looking at, I realize there's her whole family watching us.

..

 I think they were a little shocked too.