#739 Exposition on Bunting

“Bye Baby Bunting” was my first exposure—to the word bunting that is. But I have to confess, it was many years before I understood what it was bunting was. Call it a mental blind spot.
You know how you kind of move through life, picking and choosing some of what you learn about, having other things forced into your knowledge, and letting other things slip by into your vast depository of vague ignorance? So it was with bunting.
I knew that it sometimes surrounded stages and/or platforms. I remember reading about early political rallies. The stage was, more often than not, surrounded by bunting.
I believed the act of bunting was somehow separate from this. I doubted very much whether baseball players were circumnavigating stages, miming out the process of laying down a slow dribbler along the first or third base paths.
Still, because of the association with “bye baby bunting”, I was never sure what they were hanging around the stages. Diapers perhaps, certainly fabric of some sort. If they meant streamers, I figured they would have said streamers. Flags? Easy to identify as such.
I just like the sound of it now. Bunting. Bunting. Like something you do with your hips. Kind of like the seventy’s dance, the bump. Or maybe some kind of a party where everyone makes those cakes with holes in the middle. Let’s all go bundting.
But no. It’s strings of flags or flag-like material. That stuff they drape around American stages that is red, white, and blue. Flag-like, but not the actual flag, because pinning it like that would be disrespectful.
One definition of bunting is that it is the woven wool cloth from which flags are made. Thin enough to spread in the wind but not so thin as to be frayed by the wind.
Oh, and the baby bunting thing? Turns out bunting in that context refers to an infant sleeping bag, usually worn indoors during the day. Saves dealing with that whole pant, socks, and shoes thing.
Who needs shoes? It’s not like the little tyke will be running to first base or anything.
America, ya gotta love it.