Human Race: The Next Generation

To boldly go where no man has gone before... the baby store?

Yeah that's a Star Trek reference for you right in the title, Kelly. Are you happy now?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me (i.e. anyone reading this blog) that babies scare the crap out of me. I usually avoid all situations where the presence of babies (or children in general) is guaranteed. I never know what to do when they're around; I know people want you to coo and say their kid is the cutest thing they've ever seen, but seriously? Human babies are pretty ugly. They look like big prune-y masses with arms and legs attached; my buddy Cai refers to them as "alien-looking old men," which I think is pretty apt. And I am a horrible liar; earlier this week I ran into a friend from high school who I hadn't seen in 2 or 3 years. When she said she was an accountant, the best response I could come up with was "Ohhhhhh... cool?" I can't even feign interest; I'm such a dick.

As I kid, I briefly experimented with trying to like babies since I was (and am, in fact) a girl and I was socialized to believe I am supposed to give a shit. I tried baby-sitting and in the 6th grade I remember trying to start-up a Baby-Sitter's-Club-esque business with a couple of friends. I'm not sure if I ever baby-sat alone - I must have, but I really don't remember - but I do recall one time in particular when I was double-sitting one kid and my friend allowed the kid to win at a game of basketball. I looked at her and was like "how do you do that?" and my friend looked back at me like 50 IQ points had dropped straight out of my ears. I think I was less asking "how do you let a kid win at basketball?" and rather "how do you keep the kid so happy?" It honestly was above and beyond my comprehension... um, and still kind of is.

You put a kid in front of me and I will just kind of stare at it. I'm probably scaring the kid by looking it right in the eyes and not moving at all, but I really do not know what else to do. There is no flash of "make a funny face" or "play peekaboo." This is my brain on kids:

I am not fighting any natural urge to communicate: I honestly do go blank. It's not like with, say, flirting where I instinctively know what to do (look back! bat an eyelash! SMILE FOR GOD'S SAKE), but I have such a good grip on myself that I choke myself into inaction. It goes a little something like this:

And the funny thing is, I remember how easy it was to be amused as a kid. Any attention at all was the shit; I know now that they were just pretending that I was the greatest somersaulter, stand-up comedian and singer who had ever lived, but at the time I loved it because I believed it. Even just having an adult ask me innocuous questions was a self-esteem booster. There was probably nothing an adult could short of yelling in my face that wouldn't make me feel good about myself, but now that I'm the other end of this exchange, I am frozen. In fact, the only times I can remember being able to get along with kids and actually enjoying myself is when I've had one too many. The most distinct example was the friend's wedding I was in where I spent a good part of the beginning of the night dancing and running around with the flower girl and boy. I really did have a good time with that, but when I look back, I am kind of horrified that the parents let someone as drunk as I was manhandle their children in 4" heels. I'm guessing they were just happy to have a break and get drunk themselves. 

But my final summation is that kids are my weakness. Superman had his kyrptonite, Indian Jones was not a big fan of snakes, the Wicked Witch of the West could never take a shower, and sharks blow-up at the slightest hint of Shark Repellent Bat Spray (seriously, watch the link; it was on the classic Batman and Robinand now I've spent 30 minutes watching old clips from that show... the camp, THE CAMP). My fear of babies is matched perhaps only by my fear of clowns, and even then I know clowns just want to kill you (don't let them make you think otherwise, they will slaughter you in your sleep). Babies: I don't know what their end game is other than to slowly drive you insane until they grow up into surly teenagers who then may finally put you out of your misery. 

But I guess we are in fact reaching that age where people set out to prove marriage and babies are all they ever wanted. I have seen so many bachelor/ette party and wedding photos as of late and it always serves to remind me that my generation is too young to be thinking about the "next phase" (whatever that means). It ain't for me, but that kind of means it is for someone else. I'm pretty well convinced that given the trends of bad-decision making in my 20s that I'm pretty much guaranteed to be doing this at least through the next couple of years. 30 is starting to sound better and better to me in terms of general stability: a secured job, more money, and a stronger sense of what the hell I am doing with myself. But you know, Facebook means you are surrounded by everyone else's thought processes, and I'm also imagining that if I go to my 10-year high school reunion (I AM OLD OKAY), more people will be married/engaged than not. This is an objective observation; I pass no judgment. 

So just imagine my horror when I was forced to go to Babies 'R' Us yesterday. I honestly couldn't figure out where else to go; the only other things I know for kids are all the upscale baby shops in The Westchester (the hoity toity mall in White Plains), and yeah, fuck that. The one we have here in Hartsdale is a big ass warehouse; it is like Costco for kids. And it seemed totally appropriate that on my run yesterday before heading out that I saw this sign. Yeah, I posted it on Facebook already, but c'mon, it's brilliant:

Also, my camera phone is awesome. I'm pretty sure it takes higher resolution photos than my actual digital camera does.

But after a very frustrating drive down to the Babies 'R' Us (everyone was out fucking shopping yesterday; I wanted to look at shoes but the parking lot was a disaster and I stayed in it long enough to go in the entrance and then get the fuck out of there), I finally pull up and stroll into the store. But before I go in, my immediate thought was "oh Christ, are people going to think that I have a kid?" I admit this is a very strange thought to have before going into a goddamned baby warehouse (you'd think it would be the one judgment free zone for young mothers), but I made every effort to make it clear that I was there shopping for someone else's kid. I mean, since I'm still the "new girl" in my office, I get asked whether I'm single/engaged/married and I'm not quite over how odd it is to be asked those types of questions let alone having someone think I have a child. So I left my sunglasses on, put on more lip gloss, snapped my gum and played around on my phone with berry-red nails (manicures are definitely an indulgence, even when doing them by yourself. All people see are colored nails, but what is often forgotten is that it takes an hour or more for the nails to dry, and then you spend the rest of your days trying not to chip a nail). In short, I was either the obnoxious singleton or the candidate for tackiest mother of the year. Though honestly the latter would be pretty hard; there were mothers walking around that store in low-slung jeans with their thongs sticking out (people really still do that?), so here's hoping for the former. 

But there is just so much STUFF in Babies 'R' Us. Just rows and rows of stuff. More than you think any baby who still doesn't recognize its own foot as its own could ever possible need. Toys 'R' Us I get: it's a fucking warehouse full of toys. That is awesome. I always have wanted to pull all the giant balls out of one of those standing displays and play a giant game of dodgeball with all my fellow customers. But a baby warehouse? There's nothing cool in there at all. I guess I could go attacking people with a breast pump (RAWR, GIANT FACE-SUCKING SPACE MONSTERRRR), but that's just weird. And I shit you not, this actually exists:

Baby water. We make baby water now. The product description says something about slowly introducing flouride into your baby's diet and mixing this with formula, blah blah blah, but seriously? Baby water. Fucking baby water. And it's not as if there was only one shelf of this stuff; it was pretty much the entire impulse buy area in front of the cash registers. Gallon jugs, 16-oz water bottles: hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd found a way to start pumping this stuff out of a specially made showerhead so your baby can bathe is the guaranteed clarity of some shit a guy pumped out of his garden hose. It just reminds me of this exchange from the movie Tommy Boy (shut up, it's an American classic):

Tommy: Let's think about this for a sec, Ted. Why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Go on, I'm listening.
Tommy: Here's the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box 'cause he wants you to feel all warm and toasty inside.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Yeah, makes a man feel good.
Tommy: 'Course it does. Why shouldn't it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?
[chuckles until he sees that Ted is not laughing]
Ted Nelson, Customer: [impatiently] What's your point?
Tommy: The point is, how do you know the fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer? "Building model airplanes" says the little fairy; well, we're not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that's all it takes. The next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser, and your daughter's knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.
Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box? 
Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me. 

For as much as we talk about evolution these days, we don't give ourselves much credit for adapting to our environment. Human beings survived for thousands of years as babies in the harshest conditions without diapers, fluffy bassinets (holy crap I could NOT spell that word to save my life; I was spelling it "basonette" and Google would only give me search results for "bayonette"), and fucking BABY WATER, and yet there is this huge industry around how your baby is a fragile piece of glass that is going to break if you don't introduce flouride at 6-months. I mean, baby Mozart was not listening to Baby Mozart bullshit to inspire him to begin writing music as a kindergartner (um, I guess there was no such thing as a kindergartner back then, but whatever, you get it).

But yeah, I was having a minor spazz attack while walking around the infant aisles trying to figure out just what in the hell I should buy. Nobody ever trained me for this! How am I supposed to know what to get an infant? I went in thinking I'd buy clothes, but since baby clothes are, you know, 1/10th the size of actual people clothes, that means they can cram more product into the same amount of space as an adult clothes rack. So it wasn't a matter of picking one thing and leaving because THERE ARE CLOTHES EVERYWHERE. And socks, and booties, and nighties, two-piece sets, winter coats, Christmas clothes (CHRISTMAS ALREADY?!), fucking everything. I ended up in the store for probably a half-hour or more because I was stalled into inaction, and I was also busy texting away on my phone telling people how weirded out I was. And there were crying children everywhere. But whereas I feel entitled to bitch about bratty kids in the mall, a restaurant, or pretty much anywhere else, I was actually on their turf. I am the outsider, so if anyone has a right to complain, it's them. I watched one mother allow her infant to play with her smartphone because if she took it away it would start to cry; the baby damn near dropped it on the floor. I was horrified for the phone.

But I did eventually make my escape intact for the most part. I know that a lot of this makes me sound like a cold-hearted sociopathic bitch, but kids and babies are scary to me. Just to make you all more aware that I have not completely shed my grad student exoskeleton, I understand babies as a rhetorical device. You're making a sacrifice for the perpetuation of the human race: 3-am feedings and diaper changes in exchange for staying out with your buddies at the bars and clubs. Paying for your kid's sports gear over a non-rust bucket car that doesn't require a brake tune-up every 6-months.  Trading your extra 10 minutes in the morning to do your make-up to make sure your little doppleganger gets safely on the bus to school. Shooting something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon as opposed to... NOT doing that. You are no longer the kid who expects people to do something for you, but rather the person who has to provide.

But even more than all of that, you are finally learning that you are not the only person in the world and that what you do affects someone else at a truly fundamental level. I think that's where my real fear lies; I can protest that it has to do with liking to go out, enjoying my freedom and acting a fool. But really I think what terrifies me most is producing a hateful, maladjusted monster who is the way they are because I did not raise them right. Because I didn't spend enough time with them, or was too afraid to love them and express affection. That I was too demanding, or not enough (no I would be too demanding). That I ultimately did not learn the importance of sacrifice and took time for myself rather than making sure my child is doing their homework, can get to baseball practice, or just has someone around when they need them the most. I don't know if I can live with that level of responsibility, but I suppose that's where the appeal lies. I imagine parental pride is one of the most powerful feelings of all because it's not 100% selfish. Even if you think you had some part in your child's success, there is still the tacit admission that your happiness is no longer paramount. That you have learned to feel beyond just petty personal pride. That your child is not actually an extension of you, but a person - just like you - discovering who they are and what it is to be alive.

Then I remember all the idiots who find themselves with kids without ever pondering abstract principles and all of this honestly means nothing except for to me in my tiny corner of the universe. I'm pretty sure this is why it's better not to over-think everything. But it still calls to my mind a passage I read not too long ago in Of Human Bondage:


"With Hayward, Philip had disdained humanity in the masses; he adopted the attitude of one who wraps himself in solitariness and watches with disgust the antics of the vulgar; but Clutton and Lawson talked of the multitude with enthusiasm. They described the seething throng that filled the various fairs of Paris, the sea of faces, half seen in the glare of acetylene, half hidden in the darkness, and the blare of trumpets, the hooting of whistles, the hum of voices. What they said was new and strange to Philip."

I'm heading out soon to go see said friend with the baby, so perhaps I'll post some very awkward pictures of me later.