My student Hannah Warren sent along this picture she had snapped of me. It was the first full day of our recent trip to Jordan and we were exploring downtown Amman. This has become our traditional first day: start at the King Abdullah Masjid, then move on to the Citadel and the Roman theater, and then just lose ourselves in the old city. As I've mentioned before, one of the things that our guide and friend Mahmoud did so well was reach out to folks to talk to us. We were chatting with a woman inside the Roman theater when she handed me her baby. She may have just been hoping that some of the inexplicable American luck would rub off on her baby, or it might have just been representative of the extraordinary Jordanian friendliness (she probably thought I missed my grandchildren). The students seemed oddly surprised that I would happily hold a baby - or maybe they were just concerned I would eat it.
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This became a very popular picture on Facebook and Twitter. There was some talk about the identity of the baby, but my brother Eric was more interested in the identity of the old man on the right. My answer was, of course, Santa Clause. This explain why mothers always hand me children: it expedites the delivery of wish lists.
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