Boobs and Nuts

I attempted to sidestep the man in the entrance when he spoke.
“That’s just disgusting.”
“Pardon?” I asked, unsure if the stranger was speaking to me.
He pointed lazily and nodded his head in the direction of a minivan some 40 feet away.
“It’s disgusting.” He said “Why’s she gotta be like that? Out in public and all?”
As an a Appalachian I was used to people referring to vehicles as ‘She’ but this was usually saved for a tractor, truck, boat, or muscle car, not a late model minivan.
“Pardon?” I said again, my brow furling, and a sense of intractable doom arising low in my gut.
“She is one of them women that has to go around hanging her tit out and showing off. It is just plain disgusting.”
I peered harder and through the reflections in the windshield I could indeed make out the figure of what appeared to be a woman. And she was huge!
“Her?” I asked, regretting my continuance of the conversation almost instantly.
“Yeah, her. That is gross. I don’t need to see that forced on me.” He said, wrinkling his nose and turning his body askance without breaking his direct gaze on the woman.
I leaned to the right and then to the left. At that point I could make out what was happening. A woman in her early 30’s was sitting in the front seat with a blanket strewn diagonally across her. With the information he man had added I realized that she was not huge but that the lump under the blanket was her child and was further left to assume that there must be a lump under the child that was breast tissue.
“A kid’s gotta eat.” I offered. “It’s not like she can go in and get him a corndog.”
“She can go home for that shit. She don’t need to be out here forcing her boobs on everyone.”
I paused. I felt she wasn’t doing anything wrong. I felt, in actuality, that she was doing everything she could to be discreet short of tinting her windows and building a cushion fort around her in the back of the van. But this is Appalachia and disagreement is a reason for violence in my town.
But isn’t an opinion exactly what this man was soliciting by starting a conversation with a stranger in front of a store? Was he not implying he wished to be engaged? And wasn’t all of nature on my side? Did prehistoric man tell mothers not to breastfeed in the group but rather to wander off alone in an environment filled with danger to care for their children?
Surely I could muster up a civil and convincing argument that would not just assuage this man’s anger but possibly even change his mind on this issue.
I mustered up my bravery and turned to him “Don’t you think…” but he was gone.
His wife had finished her shopping and gathered him off to his extended cab truck while I was attempting to gather my thoughts. I watched the two of them climb into their vehicle and wished I had spoken more quickly.
“Well, at least I am prepared for next time.” I said to my fiancée as I watched the sun glint of his TruckNuts as he drove across the lot.