I'm working on a Theory of Infants, which I have patched together from: 1) some information I retained from a biopsychology class taken way back in the nineties, 2) my distracted observations of other infants and drug users, 3) various pop culture references, and 4) the incredibly weird shit you do on a daily basis.
Biopsychology:
I recall learning a lot more in that class than I could manage to recall at this date, but a lot has happened between here and there, which I shall bore you with, Mr. Baby, at another time. The point? I forgot everything except for these three interesting/important facts, delivered at some point during the semester by a translucent professor who chain-smoked and seemed much more viscerally cognizant of the effects of most of the drugs he described than mere textbooks or labwork generally confer upon a person.
1) Aspirin enhances the effects of alcohol, which stands out not because the fact was particularly fascinating or even unexpected, but because the professor walked out on the last half of the lecture mumbling something like ''every time, every goddam time,'' and ''profanely idiotic'' after someone raised his hand to ask if Ibuprofen would also work. It's a scene that takes on greater poignancy with every passing day of my life.
2) Nutmeg, in absurdly large quantities, mimics the effects of LSD, which I remember because nutmeg seems so innocuous and related to Christmas, albeit via eggnog, and LSD seems, well - so distant from and nontangential to cookies and Santa Claus and overly cheerful trees.
3) Slightly related to the previous point, and in fact the only factoid relevant to the current argument, all mind-altering drugs work because there is a similar drug already manufactured in the human body.
Observations of Infants:
I didn't pay a lot of attention to infants prior to having you, except for that year I ran a hybrid mafia-communist babysitting business (mafia for the bellicosity with which I 'edged' out my competition, communist for the jovially non-profiteering nature of my prices). Anyway, I don't know why anyone let me watch those kids, but I observed this: they all seemed to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Observations of Drug Users:
We've all been to a concert or two (where we've seen other people engaging in this sort of very bad, very prohibited behavior). And I observed this: everyone on drugs seems to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Pop-culture References:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Observations of You:
I've observed this: you seem to spend a lot of time freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all. Like today, when your crib guy, "Spider,'' with whom you were having an amicable conversation for several minutes, replete with hand waving and enormous toothless grinning, just freaked you right the hell out. But I mean, like, right the hell, I-just-saw -apocalyptic-locusts-eating-my-mother's-face-off-in-a-room-full-of-clowns-and-jewelery-box -music-and-Teletubbies, out. Two minutes later you guys were back to laughing again. A similar incident happened with your friend "Wall,'' who you seem to be in love with, and I think the fact that you even have intimate confidants like ''Ceiling'' and ''Floor'' is strong evidence in favor of what I shall shortly propose. However, the inordinately large amount of time you spend, unable to sleep, with your mouth and eyes open in a fascinated stupor, attempting to pick the tiny designs off of your clothes and sheets, essentially closes the case on this armchair neuropsychology manifesto.
My Theory of Infants, in case you have not pieced it together, is that infants are just tripping out on the naturally-produced version of LSD afloat in their tiny, incomplete little brains. You're not insane, Mr. Baby. You're just really, really high.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Safe and Dangerous
Hello Mr. Baby!
We seem to have a little discrepancy again, and it's regarding things that are safe and dangerous, and our respective definitions of these things. Typically, in a dispute of this type, the concerned parties discuss What They Meant By X and arrive at some sort of civil and plastic compromise. However, your judgment seems to be really, really off the mark here, really severely impaired, not even stemming from the same realm of physics governing this universe. As such, I'm just going to go ahead and assert my authoritarianism for the first of what I am sure will be many, many times and tell you that there is certain shit, Mr. Baby, that you just have to cut the hell out. Why? I am so delighted that you asked. Because I said so, which you perhaps can tell from the anticipatory tapping of my fingertips beneath my delightedly sinister expression, is something I've just been waiting around to say. And because, Mr. Baby - and this is just indisputable in light of your recent actions - those branching, flowering neurons you are purportedly growing in there have clearly not gotten around to colonizing the part of your brain responsible for common, life-preserving sense.
Lo! I've made a list of dangerous things for you, but I've also been so kind as to include a safe alternative for your convenience. The last thing we want, Mr. Baby, is to cause you any sort of inconvenience or discomfort.
Dangerous: Eying with gentle intensity, and then placing, with alarming celerity, everything you see in your mouth, with a bit of a predilection for both the shiny and the crusty.
Safe Alternative: Placing items, screened by your caregivers, largely for the specific qualities of not having gamboled about on the floor or toured the mouth of the dog, and not being designated for slicing food, in your mouth. I'll just go ahead and save you a little bit of suspense and haplessness in life; crusty is rarely a desirable quality, for your mouth, or underwear, or socks.
Dangerous: Swallowing earplugs and plastic bags.
Safe Suggestion: Swallowing the meticulously researched and thoughtfully spiced, nutritionally calibrated and lovingly prepared baby food that you are fed on a very safe, rubber-tipped spoon. In fact, you could simply reverse the way you are doing things now, and spit out earplugs or plastic bags with the same powerful, projectile vehemence that you reserve for rice mush and beans (this has the concurring benefit of being not annoying, which is another list I intend to make for you).
Dangerous: Sucking the well water that even the dog disapproves of (a formidable condemnation indeed, from a beast who blithely and unperturbed, devours piles of shit and antifreeze) out of your washcloth at bath time.
Safe (and I really thought this might have been obvious...) sucking the distilled water out of the washcloth that someone soaked for you in distilled water and gave to you as a substitute in a rare moment of prescience. One caveat, however - this must be done before, not after, dunking it into the bathwater, which, sigh Mr. Baby, sigh, is just one of the myriad of techniques you have developed for dismantling the best-made plans.
Dangerous: Feigning a complete and total lack of recall of the ability to roll, and then suddenly and with a sense of humor befit devious lemmings, having somehow determined that the person supervising you has begun to trust your spurious lateral immobility, zealously demonstrating those skills while atop a high surface.
Safe: Rolling in your crib, or on cue while people are watching and requesting that you do so in a safe and supervised setting.
Dangerous: Licking the dog.
Safe (somewhat): Licking yourself.
Dangerous: The new game you have devised for bath time, which involves looking somewhat tired and waiting, with shifty eyes no less, for someone to glance away for a nanosecond, then grinning merrily while scrunching yourself into a little baby ball with your nostrils skimming the water's surface and laughing heartily at the ensuing chaos while still partially underwater.
Safe: Remaining calm, unscrunched, and upright in the bathtub, with your face well above the water line.
Dangerous: Waiting, watching, with a perversity and savage sense of timing, for the moment that the person next to you is finally drifting in the sun-bleached, sweetly blurry foyer of sleep, and then rolling over, placing your mouth very close to that person's ear, and for no discernable reason, yelling AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH in a nagging, frantic little voice.
Safe: Sleeping through the night. In your crib. Quietly. (Also to be included in a future list entitled Irritating, and Not).
Mr. Baby, that's it for now, but I will just leave this open-ended, as I have no doubt of your ability to conjure more and more dangerous ideas, swelling in their foolish monstrosity as a function of your mobility. I caution you that the oft-repeated threat involving a giant hamster ball is not entirely hyperbolic, and I'm just the sort of person to do such a thing. I am.
We seem to have a little discrepancy again, and it's regarding things that are safe and dangerous, and our respective definitions of these things. Typically, in a dispute of this type, the concerned parties discuss What They Meant By X and arrive at some sort of civil and plastic compromise. However, your judgment seems to be really, really off the mark here, really severely impaired, not even stemming from the same realm of physics governing this universe. As such, I'm just going to go ahead and assert my authoritarianism for the first of what I am sure will be many, many times and tell you that there is certain shit, Mr. Baby, that you just have to cut the hell out. Why? I am so delighted that you asked. Because I said so, which you perhaps can tell from the anticipatory tapping of my fingertips beneath my delightedly sinister expression, is something I've just been waiting around to say. And because, Mr. Baby - and this is just indisputable in light of your recent actions - those branching, flowering neurons you are purportedly growing in there have clearly not gotten around to colonizing the part of your brain responsible for common, life-preserving sense.
Lo! I've made a list of dangerous things for you, but I've also been so kind as to include a safe alternative for your convenience. The last thing we want, Mr. Baby, is to cause you any sort of inconvenience or discomfort.
Dangerous: Eying with gentle intensity, and then placing, with alarming celerity, everything you see in your mouth, with a bit of a predilection for both the shiny and the crusty.
Safe Alternative: Placing items, screened by your caregivers, largely for the specific qualities of not having gamboled about on the floor or toured the mouth of the dog, and not being designated for slicing food, in your mouth. I'll just go ahead and save you a little bit of suspense and haplessness in life; crusty is rarely a desirable quality, for your mouth, or underwear, or socks.
Dangerous: Swallowing earplugs and plastic bags.
Safe Suggestion: Swallowing the meticulously researched and thoughtfully spiced, nutritionally calibrated and lovingly prepared baby food that you are fed on a very safe, rubber-tipped spoon. In fact, you could simply reverse the way you are doing things now, and spit out earplugs or plastic bags with the same powerful, projectile vehemence that you reserve for rice mush and beans (this has the concurring benefit of being not annoying, which is another list I intend to make for you).
Dangerous: Sucking the well water that even the dog disapproves of (a formidable condemnation indeed, from a beast who blithely and unperturbed, devours piles of shit and antifreeze) out of your washcloth at bath time.
Safe (and I really thought this might have been obvious...) sucking the distilled water out of the washcloth that someone soaked for you in distilled water and gave to you as a substitute in a rare moment of prescience. One caveat, however - this must be done before, not after, dunking it into the bathwater, which, sigh Mr. Baby, sigh, is just one of the myriad of techniques you have developed for dismantling the best-made plans.
Dangerous: Feigning a complete and total lack of recall of the ability to roll, and then suddenly and with a sense of humor befit devious lemmings, having somehow determined that the person supervising you has begun to trust your spurious lateral immobility, zealously demonstrating those skills while atop a high surface.
Safe: Rolling in your crib, or on cue while people are watching and requesting that you do so in a safe and supervised setting.
Dangerous: Licking the dog.
Safe (somewhat): Licking yourself.
Dangerous: The new game you have devised for bath time, which involves looking somewhat tired and waiting, with shifty eyes no less, for someone to glance away for a nanosecond, then grinning merrily while scrunching yourself into a little baby ball with your nostrils skimming the water's surface and laughing heartily at the ensuing chaos while still partially underwater.
Safe: Remaining calm, unscrunched, and upright in the bathtub, with your face well above the water line.
Dangerous: Waiting, watching, with a perversity and savage sense of timing, for the moment that the person next to you is finally drifting in the sun-bleached, sweetly blurry foyer of sleep, and then rolling over, placing your mouth very close to that person's ear, and for no discernable reason, yelling AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH in a nagging, frantic little voice.
Safe: Sleeping through the night. In your crib. Quietly. (Also to be included in a future list entitled Irritating, and Not).
Mr. Baby, that's it for now, but I will just leave this open-ended, as I have no doubt of your ability to conjure more and more dangerous ideas, swelling in their foolish monstrosity as a function of your mobility. I caution you that the oft-repeated threat involving a giant hamster ball is not entirely hyperbolic, and I'm just the sort of person to do such a thing. I am.
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