Just had my first proper advert dad moment going through departures at berlin-tegel. After 5 minutes of confusion over what to do with the baby's pushchair, the security lads politely commanded me to fully disassemble it, as a massive queue of waiting businessmen watched on.
We'd already held everyone up for ages, so I was feeling acutely anxious, & suddenly the pressure of the moment folded some valve of my brain completely shut. I forgot all my German, most of my English, & every conception of the pushchair as something more than an abstract shape.
I was just sort of pawing at the joints of the thing, making quiet, plaintive honking sounds - all my memory of the infernal engine's folding mechanism had vanished like snow before piss, but I figured I could postpone humiliation by at least *miming* that I was putting it down.
At this point, one of the Berliners broke the silence, offering me solidarity - clearly this had once been him. Another two or three businessmen echoed his sentiments; they were stern, but fully empathetic. Still, everyone knew that it was down to me alone to face the machine.
The struggle went on, silent but for the squeak of my feet on the tiles, and the hurricane of my own breath in my ears. My belt, removed for the scanner, clattered to the floor. At last, I could stretch out the pantomime no longer - I had to confess I had no idea what I was doing
The pushchair was impassive, sneering facelessly down at me with the cold arrogance of a deathless construct. I looked up through the metal detector like a man gazing up out of hell, to where @Glitter_brawl waited with my daughter. "Help," I croaked.
Passing our infant girl to a security staffer, my wife stepped through the portal and collapsed the machine like a warlock banishing a devil. 'You are a magician,' I managed to stammer, as my heart finally started beating again. 'Didn't happen' be damned: she was cheered.
So yeah: while pretty much everything about having a newborn has been much easier than we were warned to expect, getting a pram through a german airport was somehow a perfect manifestation of an anxiety dream.
I hasten to add: everyone we've dealt with in Berlin has been bloody lovely (except perhaps the gaunt overlord of the hotel breakfast buffet) - the problem here was the exciting combo of british queue awkwardness, and masculine-coded terror at being seen to fail at machinery.
