DADWAGON

Not all that long ago, Jean, Sasha, and I were having lunch at Bark, the actually kind of awesome hot dog place on Bergen between Fifth and Flatbush. As we were eating—or, I guess, as we cajoled and threatened Sasha into eating her hot dog—I glanced over my shoulder and noticed a woman talking with the owner/manager. She had one preschool-age kid running around her, and another, younger kid strapped to her chest. She looked awfully familiar—something about the set of her mouth, her height, the fair color of her skin.

Oh, right: Maggie Gyllenhaal.

This being Brooklyn, it was no surprise to see a celebrity parent in our midst, and I did nothing whatsoever to react to the sighting. What could I say, anyway? “I loved when James Spader jerked off on you in Secretary!”? Not cool. Maybe I could tell her how much I like her Björn, but she’d probably understand I was really talking about that scene in Secretary.

And, as I said, this is Brooklyn—and the Park Slope/Bocococococan part of Brooklyn, too. This is supposed to be the place where parenting makes you special, not which Batman films you’ve appeared in and which movie stars have pretended to masturbate upon you. Ignoring the obvious is how we all get along.

But it did make me wonder: With so many celebrities in this part of the borough, how do they interact with each other? What happens when Maggie Gyllenhaal bumps into, say, Michelle Williams over at Trader Joe’s, with all their kids in tow? What about when Adrian Grenier checks out Patrick Stewart’s groceries at the Park Slope Food Co-op? Do they acknowledge each other, assuming that their common life in the spotlight bonds them together? Or do they ignore each other entirely, since this is Brooklyn, after all? Or maybe they do as we’d do and interact in a sidelong way, by complimenting the kids’ outfits or gossiping about the Montessori kindergarten teachers?

Or do they just go home and post about it on their little-read blogs?