The Backbencher

Children: Genetically Programmed Robots Trying to Kill You

If you are currently trying to decide whether or not to have kids, there are some things I should tell you to help inform your decision. 

Children will try to kill you. If you are not up for the challenge, don't have them. But if you do, understand this: Babies are genetically programmed to try to end your life. The only reason any parent survives is that small children are as wildly ineffective at homicide as they are at just about everything. But they try.

Here's an example: Somewhere around 12 months of age, children go through a phase where they fixate on shoes. They have to touch your shoes, pick them up, and then move them all over the house. After that, all children go through a phase where they are infatuated with flashlights. They will find every flashlight you own, run down the batteries, and then hide them all.

What is happening - the shoes, the flashlights - is that your children are systematically trying to deprive you of each element of your earthquake survival kit.

Chances are that you will not be harmed by this, but it's not for lack of effort.

Some toy manufacturers have attempted to satiate toddlers' relentless appetite for flashlights by creating toy versions which automatically turn the light off after a few moments. Fools. Young children smell decoys like dogs smell fear.

The other day, when I was trying to sneak out of the house early to go to work without waking anyone up, I could not find my keys. I wanted to look for the keys in my bedroom without turning on the ceiling light and waking up my wife. So I needed a flashlight. Every single flashlight in the house was missing or out of batteries except one, the only one our toddler doesn't care about: A heavy green flashlight with googly eyes, the head of an alligator, and a body shaped like a hippopotamus. This was not helpful in keeping my wife asleep. When you activate the light, the jaws snap open, and the flashlight says, "CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! MMMMM! YUM! YUM! YUM!"

In the meantime, I managed to nearly puncture my foot by walking on a die-cast metal spaceship. Then, while hopping around trying to my stiffle yelps of pain, I stumbled into a toy broom which taunted me with a perky, "It's fun to clean up!"

Of course, children are not limited to setting traps. They will also try to injure you in more direct ways, such as by beating you with a whiffle bat or lowering their head and running at your crotch.

In fact, evolutionary biology explains this behavior. The head-lowered ram at your pelvis is a straightforward adaptation that allows children to try to prevent the introduction of extra siblings into the household. What is true for baby birds straining for a regurgitated worm is true for humans: The fewer children there are in a family, the less competition there is over a limited supply of essential resources, including food, parental nurturing, and whiffle bats.

What is not so clearly explained by evolution is why children try so hard to kill themselves. In fact, when your children start trying to kill you, it tends to come as a relief, because it usually means they have moved on from trying to kill themselves. 

Some prime ways children try to kill themselves are by climbing up stairs so they can then fall down them and by attempting to dart out into traffic. Young children look forward to walking hand-in-hand with you just so they can seize the opportunity to try to wrench their hand free and run in front of a car. 

Of course, as soon as you get home and there is no present danger, the same child will fiercely hug your leg and go limp to prevent you from walking away from them - for instance, to keep you from doing something utterly selfish, such as using the toilet.

The top way children try to kill themselves is by putting things in their mouths. Small things, shiny things, dirty things. Many children will put anything in their mouths except a vegetable - unless you count moldy brown leaves found under the welcome mat to be a vegetable. 

One thing children love putting in their mouths - and in my experience this kicks in around nine to 10 months of age - is shoes. They especially like to put their tongue on the sole of a shoe that you just wore into the public restroom at a train station. 

When I explain to people that children put things in their mouths in an effort to kill themselves, I often get someone explaining to me how putting an object in the mouth is just a child's way of learning about the world. I'm sorry, that is absurd. True, children start putting shoes in their mouths right about the time they start trying to stand upright and walk. But learning about walking by putting shoes in your mouth just is not going to work. If people could learn about things by putting them in their mouths, I'd be a Ph.D.-level entomologist after all the gnat clouds I gulped down this summer while mowing the lawn. 

Speaking of which, I gotta go. I think that's the sound of my kid trying to start up the lawn mower.

Family Matters

Sorry about not posting last week. I have been consumed with other matters.

Last Tuesday, doctors removed a large mass from my wife’s abdomen. It was purple, slimy, and seemed angry to be disturbed. We named it Zane. I’m happy to say that Zane pinked up quite nicely within several seconds after removal, and he was definitely less gross after a bath.

While my wife was on some serious pain medication recovering from her c-section, I decided, as a caring husband who is concerned about the quality of her healthcare, to test the effectiveness of the medications she was receiving by posing various questions to her, such as “Do you mind if I buy a pick-up truck?”

It turns out that the immediate post-op recovery period presents an excellent opportunity for husbands to get their wives’ approval on all kinds of critical family expenditures. Not only did she agree to a pick-up, but I also got her consent to a rider lawn tractor, a compound cross-cut miter saw, and something called an “Arctic Cat.”

I don’t know exactly what an Arctic Cat is, but I think it’s some kind of snowmobile. All I know for sure is, judging by the rear-window decals I see, Arctic Cat appears to be very popular with pick-up owners here in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Therefore, I figured, I should make sure to be able to get one, especially since I’m already getting the truck. I’ll need something to haul.

I should note that Arctic Cat’s popularity is not universal. One pick-up around town sports an apparently a new window decal depicting Calvin, of the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip, urinating on an Arctic Cat logo. This is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s somewhat surprising that people are that passionate about their snowmobile brand preferences. Second, that whole Calvin-urinating-on-a-logo thing peaked when I was in high school.

Yikes.

America needs to find a new obnoxious window-decaling trend for our trucks. And that’s an issue you can be sure I will take up when I announce my write-in candidacy for president next week.

But, in the meantime, I should tell you that mother and baby are doing fine. Please e-mail me or post a comment to weigh in on whether I need a cup holder on my lawn tractor.

The Miracle of Pregnancy

So why have I been talking about cribs lately? If you haven’t guessed, we’re expecting. In fact, as our family gets ready for the new arrival, I have some information I would like to share with you men out there about the miracle of pregnancy.

One of the most fascinating aspects of pregnancy is how the coming baby will affect the dreams of both you and your wife.

Heading into the third trimester, your wife’s nesting instinct will kick into high gear. Her dreams will be consumed with repainting the house, cleaning the blinds, deciding where to put the crib, etc. Don’t be surprised if you wake up at 3 a.m. to your wife tapping you on the shoulder to tell you that she just realized the changing table should not go right next to the crib because one is pine and the other is simulated maple.

Meanwhile, your dreams, as the husband, will turn darker. You can expect to have dreams such as these: (1) A diesel locomotive drives through your living room. (2) You stand by helpless as aliens try to drown a moose they’ve abducted in gelatin. (3) Above your house hovers an experimental aircraft made up of helicopter blades mounted on a speedboat with a jet engine strapped to the back.

Are these dreams brought on by the anxiety of becoming a new father? No, they are not. These dreams are triggered by the horrendous snoring coming out of your pregnant wife.

That’s right. Science tells us that as your wife’s body prepares itself for childbirth, elevated estrogen levels increase mucus production and cause swelling in the mucous membranes of the nasal passages. To boil down this medical mumbo jumbo to English, this means that as your wife is peacefully dreaming of rearranging the living room furniture, you will be dreaming of someone operating a broken vacuum cleaner three inches from your face.

A constant anxiety for new parents is how exposure to chemicals or other things in the environment might have an effect on the growing fetus. The good news is, this anxiety lessens considerably with your second child. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, Joe, we would ask questions of the obstetrician such as, “How can Mint Milanos affect the growing fetus? Should we be worried?”

My wife and I were incredibly careful when expecting Joe, but regardless, something happened during the development of his brain. As a result, he has a crippling dietary limitation whereby he refuses to eat any kind of fruit unless it has been pureed, combined with apple juice concentrate, and flattened into “FruitStrips®” that cost approximately $576 per ounce.

This leads me to an important question for those of you expecting for the second time: How should you talk with your pre-existing child about the new baby on the way?

A friend told my wife and I that we shouldn’t tell Joe too early in the pregnancy about the baby sibling growing inside his mom. “Little kids can’t really understand the concept of something like that, since it can’t be seen or touched,” she explained.

With all due respect to our friend, this is spectacularly wrong advice.

The fact is, small children are all too capable of believing in things they can’t see or touch. Tell a child there’s such a thing as – SPOILER ALERT – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or justice for celebrity criminal defendants, and they will believe you. Kids are comically easy to deceive.

As easy as it is to persuade Joe of some things, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, get Joe to believe that there could be anything edible on the inside of a pineapple. Even when you cut the thing open and eat a piece.

“A pineapple could hurt me, Daddy.”

In fact, the only time Joe may have started to doubt that we were telling the truth about there being a baby inside Mom is when we took him to see the ultrasound. We thought it would be a great way to help him feel involved in the pregnancy.

He was incredibly excited. For about five seconds. After that, he realized that the ultrasound was about the worst television show in the history of the world.

“Do you see the bone, Joe?”

“Um, maybe. Sure.”

“There! Do you see the baby’s nose?”

“Oh, yeah, I see it,” Joe offered patronizingly. “You want to play cars with me now, Daddy? I say, let’s play cars.”

“How about you wait patiently for another 10 minutes. If you can do that, I won’t try to make you eat a strawberry for the rest of the day.”

“Hmmm. Well, okay, Daddy.”

Baby Furniture to Creep You Out for a Lifetime

I write today to tell you about one of the scariest products ever to be offered for sale anywhere in the world: the lifetime crib.

When your child is old enough, the lifetime crib converts into a toddler bed. After more years have gone by, it converts into a full-size bed.

Uh huh. You heard right: This is a piece of furniture designed to last your child's ENTIRE lifetime.

The advertising materials don’t say this, but once your child has passed on, the lifetime crib can even be broken up into kindling and used as a funeral pyre.

Why, these manufacturers ask, would you buy just a crib when you could buy a single piece of furniture that will take your child through his or her entire lifetime?

BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO MAJORLY CREEP MYSELF OUT. THAT’S WHY.

Call me weird, but when I place my newborn in a crib for the first time, I’m not interested in turning to my wife and saying, “Just think, honey, decades from now, long after we are dead, our son, when he is shriveled with age and too weak to move, will take his last labored breath in this piece of furniture. Golly gee, isn’t that great?”

Baby’s Dream Furniture, Inc., for instance, sells a lifetime crib with the name – and this is actual truth – “Infinity.”

Baby’s Dream urges that their cribs will ease the baby’s transition from crib to toddler bed “because the child remains in the same environment that they have grown comfortable with.”

Yikes. Remind me that I do not want to hear Baby’s Dream’s prescription for weaning.

So here's my plea to the world's corporations: Please stop reminding me of my own mortality. You are a corporation. So I understand that, in the regular course of business, you may have to kill me with pollution, saturated fat, cholera brought on by low-flow toilets – whatever. You've got to do what you've got to do to make a buck. Fair enough. But please, please stop needlessly reminding me that I am going to die.

As bad as crib manufacturers are about reminding you of your own mortality, no one is worse than the car companies.

This is because, out of some irresistible compulsion, car companies are simply unable to make commercials about cars. They must, instead, make them about life’s transitions.

One of the creepiest car commercials of all time was a Saturn ad (below) featuring Alphaville's slow-dance prom anthem, "Forever Young."

The commercial depicts four teenagers in a Saturn Ion slowly driving through a town called “High School.” The car rolls past kids in tuxedos and prom dresses having the time of their life. It’s all very surreal and dream-like. Then the travelers in the Saturn reach a sign that says “Leaving High School.”

Having spent literally seconds in High School, the young folks then drive on down the road into the empty night.

Does this make you think about buying a Saturn? I'll tell you what it makes me think: “Oh. That’s our existence. We’re all just speeding through life in a compact mid-market sedan, racing toward an exit called ‘Death.’”

I’m doing the math in my head for the kids in the commercial. It’s a 30-second ad. If they did high school inside a half-minute, these kids are going to be dead before the next commercial break.

Cheerful!

So, let me just conclude by saying, there’s no time to go the auto mall, my friend! Just crawl in my lifetime crib and HOLD ME while the bittersweet swell of life rushes by!

__________

Illustrations:

Picture: The "Kathryn" lifetime crib from Baby's Dream. Creep-out factor: 9.7.

Video: The Saturn Ion "High School" commercial. Creep-out factor: 11.