Dinosaurs, brown eyes and assumptions

As dusk fell this afternoon, I was on a bus in a fairly upmarket area of West London, heading, as it turned out (it wasn't Plan A), for my 'London local'. A few stops after I'd boarded, the pair of seats in front of me were occupied by a youngish woman and a boy of 6 or 7. They may have been blood-related, but there wasn't a family resemblance, and she had what sounded like an Eastern European accent, so she may have been a nanny rather than a parent, especially given the affluent nature of the locality. He was rather cute, with reddish-brown curly hair, and, as I noticed as he turned around and knelt on his seat to play with the toys he had in hand, Triceratops and T-Rex models, big, lovely mid-brown eyes. I looked his way a few times as he played, benignly, I hoped, and he looked back, maybe wanting to interact in some way. But, of course, I didn't, afraid of what his carer might think if I'd spoken to him, assuming that she would think the worst. But maybe that, in itself, was an assumption, perhaps she might, given the totally public environment, have decided that it would have been perfectly safe for me to have talked to him about dinosaurs, or whatever. As I've said before, the paranoia engendered by the 'stranger danger' meme sometimes works both ways.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B