#RoyalBaby

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I’m a Libra.  I try for balance in all areas of my life. But I’m a Libra—the scales often tip more one way than another.
Anyone who knows me knows that I sometimes become obsessed by random things.  This week it appears it was the birth of the #RoyalBaby. To me, no matter what they name him, he will always be #RoyalBaby.  This is, after all, the age of Twitter.  From the moment I booted up my computer and saw the MSN breaking news was Kate was in labor, I was hooked. 
My first tweet of the day read:
Dear Boss: I can't come in today. Kate's in labor. She needs me. ‪#‎RoyalBaby
Of course I went to work. I may be obsessive but I also have a mortgage to pay. Still, like a cat, I was fascinated by all the bright shiny things that comprised news of the #RoyalBaby’s imminent arrival. Like a cat after a ball of string, all day, I chased news across Twitter and CNN.
One cranky friend, apparently tired of my breathless Facebook updates wrote, “Dear God. Don't tell me you care about this tripe?”  Because I’m a sensitive sort I started thinking about my reaction to the whole thing and tried to figure out what about it captivated me.  I admit, I don’t often watch the news, or pay attention to celebrity gossip.  In truth, until the MSN breaking news story I hadn’t known Kate was that far along in her pregnancy. 
I think I was just having fun with it. I got to interact with all kinds of people in the hallways at work, and on Twitter and Facebook. Yet even as I was posting regularly about the coming #RoyalBaby, I was acutely aware that at this same moment in history when the #RoyalBaby pushed his way out of Kate’s womb, with the eyes of the world trained on England and the ears of the world straining to hear his first cries, somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, somewhere in rural China, somewhere in a hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, another child was born, unremarkable, unnoticed, his cries heard by but a few.

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