an evolutionary anomaly

I know, I know, I've been a little scarcer than I'd like around the ol' blogosphere lately. Same old story: full-time job (and those soybean fields are damn hot and humid this summer), endless thesis-writing (137 pages and counting...), almost no sleep (mmm...sleep), blah, blah, blah. Anyway, sorry to bitch and moan when there are WAY worse jobs I could have. I'm just sayin'.

OK then. Let's move on to something a little more relevant to zygotes, daddies, etc. Ready? Good.

You know, maybe it's a little late for this realization (or then again maybe I'm right on schedule) but I have recently discovered that very small children scare the crap out of me. The thing is, they lack that self-preservation instinct that kept our ancestors from deciding to just walk up to the nearest sabertooth tiger and rub its belly. Avoiding that sort of day-ruining event tends to be useful, but it seems little kids are prone to systematic lapses in evolutionary memory. Let me illustrate with a couple of recent examples:

I've mentioned on occasion our friends (let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Plover) with 18-month-old twins, whom we visit with some regularity, especially now that Mr. Plover has spent the entire summer in the middle of Montana looking for Mountain Plover nests. (Aren't I just too clever with my pseudonyms? Where do I get it?)

[In case you're wondering what that sort of job entails, picture spending all day hunched over looking for widely-scattered, tiny rings of brown pebbles tucked away amidst millions of acres of high desert -- I know, how awesome a job is that? A tad monotonous maybe, but in my humble opinion, hundreds of miles from nowhere is absolutely the best place to spend the summer. Oops. I think I may have just had a foot-in-mouth moment, or at least one of selfish befuddled hypocrisy. I suppose I'll find out as soon as d.w. reads this post. But I digress.]

So the aforementioned twins, Annie and Danny (which aren't really their names, but twins' names are supposed to rhyme, right? And no, there's no relation to this Danny — maybe I need to be more creative with these things...), each scared me shitless on separate occasions the other day when d.w. and I were hanging out with Mrs. Plover at her apartment. Here's what happened:

First, the masculine child.

It being a hot day, we grabbed our bathing suits before heading over there. The plan was for d.w. and me to take the twins to the apartment complex's swimming pool, thereby simultaneously a) assuaging d.w.'s misery resulting from the joint-warping combination of gravity and fetal acrobatics, b) giving a 23-year-old de facto single mother of twins a rare few moments to collect herself, and c) offering me a dubious justification for an afternoon's procrastination. All in all, a win-win-win situation.

That is, until Danny repeatedly let it be known that sitting in my arms in the pool, bobbing upright near the steps is simply no fun, and how cool would it be to stick his face in the water again and again and again. Especially when he's wearing a floppy sun hat that obscures his face so I have to rely on d.w's panicked expressions to know when I might want to flip him a little more upright.

See what I mean? How could I not be scared when very small children seem to have a serious death wish? I know they're too young yet to even talk or walk without doing that "careening headlong in an arbitrary direction until either the ground or the pointy edge of a table quickly teaches them about Newton's second law of motion" thing, but seriously, DON"T YOU WANT TO LIVE TO SEE 2???

OK. Then not an hour later it was cute little Annie's turn to scare the crap out of me, but of course she just had to one-up her brother. Oh goody.

So we adults (don't laugh, though I realize it's a little comical that I, at the ripe old age of 26, was the oldest person there) were all sitting around at the table eating dinner while Annie and Danny were quietly (for about a nanosecond, at least) occupying themselves. Before long Annie climbed up into my lap, having noticed that she had temporarily ceased being the center of attention, and knowing that I am a total sucker (Or should I more properly be considered a "sucka"? Discuss.) for a kid sitting in my lap. Must be a kind of radar. Call it "Sucka-dar". Anyway, I cut up a few little apple pieces for the hungry little one while we all were talking.

When I next glanced down at her (maybe 5 seconds later), I noticed that she had stuffed EVERY SINGLE PIECE of the apple into her mouth. Without swallowing. And then, just as I was coaxing her to spit them out, she started to choke on them.

HOLY. CRAP.

Let me tell you, my finger was in that mouth so fast it's un-freakin'-believable.

You're probably chuckling at my earnestness in writing this, because I'm sure this kind of thing is a normal occurrence for little kids, what with their evolutionarily inexplicable disregard for their own survival and all. But seriously, jamming as many pieces of apple into your mouth as you can, while sitting in a guest's lap, WHILE YOUR MOTHER LOOKS ON??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

[Really, Mrs. Plover, I'm not trying to kill your children. Honest.]

All I have to say is that I sure hope the zygote doesn't inherit his father's potentially lethal combination of impulsiveness, clumsiness. and absent-mindedness. That could be a bad, bad scene.

Comments

I'm sorry but that was freakin' hilarious.

Reminds me of that Onion Article where they (meaning scientists) have discovered that babies are stupid. They are put on a life raft with bottled water, cans of food and can openers and are unable to help themselves and end up dying of starvation. A baby is placed in front of a fire and actually leans in to touch it and burns himself. A baby is given the option of a teddy bear and a shard of glass and the baby picks up the glass.

They just don't get it, do they? (smile) At least you're practicing your cat-like reflexes!!

[samantha Jo Campen]

Sorry. That was my brilliance up there.

[Dad_to_Be]

I'd say the fact that you stuck your finger into a kid's mouth " so fast it's un-freakin'-believable" suggests that you've got exactly the right qualifications for looking after kids.

If the Zygote does inherit his dad's "impulsiveness, clumsiness. and absent-mindedness" it'll be fine. You've lived long enough with all those characteristics, after all!

[Henitsirk]

My son is 4 and my daughter is 2, and I wonder sometimes if I'm going to make it through toddlerhood. Let's see...choking on food, hitting heads on concrete slabs/pointy table edges/doorjambs, picking up broken glass, dislocating an elbow 3 times, running away from home (yes, already at age 3, the worst 20 minutes of my life)...

Isn't it amazing how so many animals are almost self-sufficient at birth, but humans have such big heads we have to be born before we can fend for ourselves? (OK, that's the theory I've heard, correct me if I'm wrong.)

[the weirdgirl]

I've heard parenthood described as being "on suicide watch" until the kids are at least three years old.