I go to the library for peace and quiet and to read the great books, but the peace and quiet thing can be dicey in these places.

On a recent Saturday, I am sitting at a table reading a Norman Mailer novel when a mother walks up with a baby and plops the baby down on the carpet next to me.

The baby is in his baby carrier, or baby seat or whatever you call it, strapped in like a little NASCAR driver. And the mother, she just takes off!

Naturally, the baby starts staring at me.

Babies seem to stare at me a lot. I have written about this before. They must find me to be unusual-looking. Or maybe they look at me and think: So this is what life does to a person.

Anyway, this baby won't stop staring. He's sucking on his little pacifier, really working it over. But the whole time, he's just staring a hole in me with these big blue eyes.

I don't know if you've ever tried to read with a baby staring at you. But it's really hard.

So now I try holding the book in front of my face, thinking the baby might get bored with the cover of a Norman Mailer book and look at something else.

But babies never get bored. Every little thing is fascinating to them, probably because they haven't been around that long.

Sure enough, every time I look up, the baby is still staring. I must have read the same paragraph a half-dozen times, because every time I look at him, I lose my place.

A minute or two later, the baby decides he is not torturing me nearly enough and must raise the ante.

So he starts to cry.

Well, I say "cry." That's how it started. But within seconds what we had here was more like a wail. It was a constant wail, too, broken only by little gasps when he tried to catch his breath for the next wail.

Whatever happened to libraries being quiet places?

When I was a kid, the library was so quiet I thought they were going to hand out Communion.

Now, anything goes. You have teenagers horsing around while they prep for the SATs. You have toddlers running all over the place like it's their private indoor track. You have middle-aged people pecking away on computers with their big, fat fingers while shouting: "How do you get to Google?"

So now this baby is wailing up a storm. Have you ever heard the Sioux wail over their dead? This is worse. And the mother is still nowhere to be seen, down some quiet aisle in the fiction section, probably getting her reading done.

The other thing I should mention is that the baby is still staring in the midst of all this wailing.

You wouldn't think a baby could stare and wail at the same time. You'd think he'd sort of shut his little eyes from the effort, or they'd narrow into little slits or something.

But this baby could stare and wail. And he somehow managed to keep his pacifier in his mouth, too. He was really gifted in that regard. If you call that a gift.

Anyway, you try getting anything done with a baby going thermonuclear right next to you. It's very difficult. There was nowhere else to go, either. All the other tables were filled.

I keep hearing people don't read anymore. But this library was jumping, although it won't be if they start letting in a lot of babies like this baby.

Now, as the wailing continues, I start to get paranoid.

I think: The mother's going to come back and think I did something to set the baby off.

This is how it goes with these mothers. They never think that babies do anything wrong. The staring, the wailing, all of that gets brushed under the table. When you're a baby, it's a free pass on your behavior every day.

Sure enough, the mother finally returns with a couple of books and right away she goes to the baby and says: "What's the matter, sweetie?"

Sweetie, that's a good one. That kills me. If she saw the way the baby was staring before the wailing started, maybe she wouldn't think he's such a sweetie.

As if on cue, the baby quiets down. They always do that. Then he goes back to chomping on his pacifier, like he doesn't have a care in the world.

The mother looks at me. I smile and pretend to go back to the Mailer novel, which is The Naked and the Dead, if you want to know. But then I think maybe she'll think it's a porn book, so I look up again.

She smiles and says: "I hope he wasn't bothering you."

Oh, no, I tell her. I love babies.

Then she picks him up in that carrier thing, like he's a little sultan, and the two of them head to the checkout counter. The baby's smiling like: Yes, let's go, our work here is done.

I go back to the Mailer book. Two toddlers sprint past, giggling hysterically. But that's nothing after a baby's been working on you. That's like elevator music.

kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com