Dear Mr. Baby:
I fully admit to not being, particularly when it comes to setting an example, the Cadillac of parents. The occasional colorful metaphor slips out, and I have a tendency to just reach over people for margarine rather than request politely that it be passed. I frequently sneeze without covering my nose, and to be perfectly honest I cannot explain why I do that. It's gross. But in the name of being a good parent and not having a total dick of a child, I exert a great deal of energy (a great deal, Mr. Baby, and we're already pretty tapped here), trying to lead by example, to be more refined than I actually am, to use a napkin and to say please and thank you and to conduct all the business of life with some degree of decorum. In my glorification of what are probably very commonplace manners, you may think of me as the Acura of mothers. I'm not the best, but if you follow my examples you can at least be seen at public and semi-fancy venues. In North America.
As such, I am almost 100% positive that you did not learn any of the subsequently discussed behaviors from me, or your dad, or even our canine companion, whose ill manners are to be excused based upon a lack of opposable thumbs.
So who, Mr. Baby, is the setter of examples in your life? Who continually covers comestibles in ketchup or jam or any artificially-colored, fructose-based substance, places them in his mouth to be churned like a used and clotted, day-old mouthwash, and then deposits them on the table? And then yells until the clump of saliva-sodden bread is re-covered in marmalade or maple syrup, to be re-inserted into the mouth to be churned again, removed of sugary coating, and redeposited on the table for, as you put it, "mo''' possibly forever?
I ask because I'd like to talk to this person, ask him why he is what he is, a creature with no regard for even the most basic tenets of human (or canine) decency, sculpting himself into a specimen of behaviour that extends beyond the boorish to the realm of barbaric. Why he has never heard of germ theory, or if he has, why he is so cavalier before its indisputable conclusions, cultivating, as he is, whatever lives on the floors and tables of the world, incubating disease and probably insects in the incessant ebb and flow of his carbohydrate-infused saliva. And why, most fascinating of all, he seems insensible to the texture of his food, to its quivering gelatinous semi-liquified shapelessness, shaking slightly on the table with the unheimlich inner inertia of jell-o. I want to ask him how he is not moved to a sick horror as he puts this substance back into his mouth, cooled as it is to the temperature of recent roadkill, or heated (if you prefer to think of it this way) to the damp, hospitalizing temperature of a potato salad left rotting in the swampy shade of a July picnic.
There's more.
While I cannot testify that I always dot my face daintily with a napkin to clear away the crumbs or dribble of the half-digested food eaten in lieu of my own lunch, I am certain I have never combed my hair with a fork, using scrambled eggs as conditioner. Nor have I used an overturned bowl of tuna casserole as a hat. And I sometimes tire of your stories and listen only partially, so I cannot claim to be the greatest of listeners, but I am confident that I never wait patiently, sometimes feigning introspection, until others in the room - joined as they are in holy matrimony and desiring to speak to each other, if not about love then at least about whether the proof of insurance is in the car or not - open their mouths. And then, only then, begin to emit a string of deafening nonsense syllables, the din of which obliterates not only the possibility of transmitting information between these two people, but also, in their souls, the desire to ever begin speaking again. I cannot testify to excusing myself politely on a consistent basis when requesting that Fred extract himself from his lazy, rug-like positioning in the major throughfares of our home, but I am positive that I do not go around seeking people sitting comfortably in a chair and push them out of it, smiling and saying sweetly, ''sit, sit,'' but actually just being a huge asshole and taking everyone's seat.
Take me to this person, this leader of small men, so that I may discuss these less-than-exemplary examples being set clandestinely in my home, and perhaps pay him off to behave like a human. Because I'm not above bribery anymore. And you're becoming a bit of a ruffian, Mr. Baby. Just a bit.
