Teddy Bear Market

By now it's become a popular joke that with Bluetooth headsets for phones, you can no longer tell who is talking on the phone and who is talking to themselves, or some imaginary person. And since our inner cities are dominated by young professionals and those who fall through the cracks in the mental health system, it could believably be either.

Well I've now seen something that looks stranger: a parent talking on the phone, while with a small child. Yesterday I saw a woman pushing a child in a stroller through the grocery store, chatting away. As she got closer, I realized that she was discussing the effect of unemployment numbers on investor confidence.  There was a brief moment when I wondered why she would be discussing that with her kid. He didn't look old enough to understand "going to work," never mind, "consumer confidence impact on rates of return." True, the baby talk that adults use to talk to kids is often as unintelligible as economic jargon, but I quickly realized that she must be in the middle of a call.

I should note: I didn't actually see a Bluetooth headset on her, so it's possible that:

• She was hallucinating an economist who doesn't like children.
• Her child is (or is being groomed to be) an investment prodigy.