"You're just like Britney Spears!"

I froze. I tried not to let the polite smile dissolve into an expression of disgust. My face felt hot, and my teeth clenched. I feigned a chuckle as the teenage carousel attendant stood before me, clearly unaware that she had offended me, strapped my two kids onto the carousel horses. As she walked away, her words echoed in my head. Britney Spears?!

As a petite Indian woman, I couldn't understand at first how I stacked up to Britney. Was it my caked on makeup? Nope, no makeup today. My quickie marriage to my rapper/dancer boyfriend? Oh, wait, that was the trashie magazine I read yesterday. My inappropriately tight clothing? My protruding pooch and love handles? Ok, it's been a while since I went to the gym. But, then I knew, the teenager referred to me having two kids about one year apart in age.

Yeah, I know, I'm crazy. And Brit, well, she may be crazy too, but for other reasons. No one I know really plans these things. I'm sure Brit didn't either. Then again…

I mean, don't misunderstand. My husband and I wanted our kids close together in age. Growing up, my sisters and I were spread quite a bit apart. The three years between my precocious older sister and me might well have been twenty in emotional years. (Yes, I was that immature.) And then eight years between my younger sister and me made for some interesting sibling rivalry. So, we had thought two years would be a perfect span between kids. Yet, only five months after I had my first baby, just when I felt like got my body back…BAM. Literally and figuratively. Forgive me, Emeril.

My husband and I were elated to be giving our firstborn a playmate and sibling, but, honestly, we were surprised it happened so soon. It took two years to get pregnant the first time, so we had thought it could take that long to get pregnant again. Silly us.

After our shock dissipated, we mentally prepared ourselves for what lay ahead. Going from one to two kids is hard no matter what. But the thought of juggling the demands of a newborn when my first son hovered on the cusp of toddlerhood terrified me. Armed with my double stroller and thoughts of our two cherubs being best buds one day very soon, I felt moderately ready for the changes ahead. Little did I know that I also had to ready myself people's candid opinions.

I get it. Really. Two kids—14 months apart. It's surprising, some might say horrifying. But, more surprising was that people expressed their unadulterated thoughts. I know I'm crazy, but I don't want to hear people say it to me. Whatever happened to if you don't have something nice to say…? And I really don't want to hear what people think of my sex life. Call me old-fashioned. Call it a pet peeve. And yet, everywhere I turned, strangers felt obliged to do just that when they found out how close the kids were.

Everywhere, people gawked at us as if we were a circus sideshow.

At the playground, people watched me intently as I darted between my older son who boldly climbed the jungle gym and my younger son who sat quietly in his infant seat near a bench. They averted their gaze when I made eye contact. I could see them calculating, guessing the ages of my kids. Some people, overcome by curiosity, even dared to ask the age difference between the boys.

"Wow! Your hands are full!" or "You are busy!" they would say—the emphasis falling heavily upon each word.

Some people were more brazen. "Was that planned?"

"Yeah, I wanted to get knocked up as soon as possible…that whole period thing is for the birds" I'd think to myself.

Still, others were startling. One morning, I took the boys for a walk in the double stroller. The baby dozed off in his infant seat tucked away under the double stroller's canopy, and my toddler chattered away nonsense words, pointing to squirrels and birds. As I huffed and puffed up the sidewalk, a middle-aged man standing at his front door started talking to my toddler. When he noticed the other baby and asked their ages, he looked me over and wagged his finger at me, "Tell your husband to put a thing on it!"

"Why are you worried about my husband's thing?" I thought, unable to articulate any intelligent thoughts in response.

The man then launched into a tirade about the cost of education and my inability to financially provide for our boys to go to an Ivy League school. "Well, maybe my kids are underachievers and stupid and won't go to Ivy League," I retorted in my thoughts as I scurried away. I kicked myself yet again for not thinking of a great comeback.

Thankfully, not everyone felt the need to rebuke me.

When I went to a children's museum with my 16-month old toddler running zig-zags across different exhibits and my 2-month old baby tucked into a baby carrier, we found ourselves playing next to two young girls whose parents looked on. My toddler starting taking toys away from the girls while I gently put them back. When the woman asked me the age difference between my kids, she said, "Wow! You're crazy!" The emphasis on the word crazy was too emphatic to ignore.

"Yeah," I said, trying to laugh it off and pretend my feelings weren't hurt. I gazed at her two well-behaved daughters, whispering and handing each other teacups in the pretend kitchen as my toddler kept banging pretend food against the table. "How far apart are they?" I asked.

"19 months. So I'm crazy too." She smiled, as she walked away.

That was my first glimpse of a "league" of moms with two kids less than two years apart, other than the kinship I obviously felt with Britney, of course. The league saved me. Saved me from always feeling like I had my underwear around my ankles when the bathroom stall door opens unexpectedly. Saved me from checking into rehab when my toddler was jumping off the dining room table..again, as the baby wailed in his crib upstairs. Saved me from shaving my head and joining an ashram when I stood in the kitchen slapping together dinner while dragging both cranky kids clinging to my legs. And it let me focus on raising my two kids instead of answering to an old codger without a hobby.

Seems like I ran into these women just when I needed a reminder that I wasn't a freak show after all. Ok, there are times I am a freak show, but that's only when I'm going on two hours of sleep.

I remember vividly after a long morning at a water park--about the time when I regretted the decision to come to the water park at all--I cradled the baby in the shade while my husband and toddler splashed playfully in the splash pool, daydreaming about naptime for the whole family. A woman standing close by dried off her two boys as they came out from the pool. "It gets easier," she said loudly in my direction. I looked over at her two boys who could have been twins. "I bet your kids are about 14 months apart."

"Yeah! How did you know?"

"I just guessed. Mine are too. Believe me, it's hard now, but it's sooooo much easier now that they're older."

I immediately felt revived by her encouragement. It's nice to know that not everyone thinks that I should be on the cover of some tabloid magazine. Still, despite the fact that it took some time to get used to people's blunt observations on my life, I'm not going to let them bother me anymore. It's human nature for people to say inappropriate things, right? So, go on, hit me, baby…one more time.