ME VS. BABY: WINNER TAKE ALL

I hate kids. Okay, maybe hate isn't exactly the correct term. I shouldn’t say that I hate them. I'm just completely disgusted by them, and the poop in their pants, and their goo-covered fingers, and their bizarre, crooked, no-toothed grins.

If by chance we ever meet, and you happen to bring your kid along don’t be upset if show very little interest at all in it. Don’t take it personally. It's not that I think your kid in particular is gross as much as it is that I think all kids are gross.

There’s a reason I paid a doctor to take a scalpel to my nuts up in my early twenties and it sure as hell wasn't because I adore tiny, useless bags of chubandspitandcrap.

On the off chance that you find my dislike of wide-eyed, foul smelling, sticky-fingered human beings confusing, let me take this opportunity to at least explain myself.

One day my wife and I stopped by her aunt’s house briefly to say hello and get a good look at the new addition to the family.

"The babies here! Come over and see the baby!"

“Ohmygawd the baby will be here for a few hours! Hurry up and come look!"

"Baby! Come see the baby! Come see now!"

“HOLY SHIT! YOU’VE GOTTA SEE THIS MOTHERFUCKING BABY!”

These are the kind of phone calls my wife gets on a regular basis and believe it or not she’s actually excited when she gets them.

Personally, I don't get it.

The kid doesn't walk. The kid can't talk. The kid can't sing me a song, or tell me a story. It can't chat with me about comics, or music, or make useless small talk about the weather, or pretend to be interested in any of the mostly pointless nonsense that spews from my mouth. The kid can’t really do anything other than poop. It can poop and it can drool, and when it’s done doing that it can poop and drool some more - right on top of the previous poop and drool.

Maybe I am missing something or maybe my soul is too black and my brain too jaded, but babies in general seem pretty damn useless.

I don't know.

I guess it's just me. It has to be, right? Why else would there be so many people on the planet - you know, other than the fact that people really like sex and really hate to cover their dongs in latex?

Even if it is, that doesn't necessarily make me wrong.

Call me when you can help me with my taxes at the end of the year. Until then, good luck with that whole diarrhea diaper thing.

Anyway, I was sitting on the couch next to my wife’s cousin – who was also the father of the little bundle of joy - and he has the squirming, fleshy creep show in his arms.

Did I forget to mention that he’d just announced to the room that the kid had in fact, shit her britches?

Wonderful.

With this bit of knowledge in my head, I notice that the baby is looking right at me. She was starring at me with a peculiar sort of smile on her face. She's was looking me over and scanning me for weaknesses. The little jerk was planning something. Something flashed behind those dead blue eyes – inspiration maybe – undoubtedly nefarious in nature.

She knew exactly what she was going to do.

She knew that the shimmery dollop of slobber on her mouth and the bulge of compacted crap ballooning her diaper was freaking me out.

Oh yeah, she knew.

With a bubbly, baby food smelling gurgle, she began crawling toward me. In no time at all the horizontal crawl turned vertical. Suddenly she was climbing up me.

Within seconds she was a mere three inches from my face, leaning wobbly on my shoulder on her stubby legs. Her blank eyes latched onto mine. Her mouth opened and a river of spittle rolled over her chin. Her soaked lips curled into a crooked smile. Here expression was undeniable. Without ever saying a word she was telling me, "I've got you now, you uncomfortable pathetic loser."

And she was right.

The river of mucus drool was hanging perilously from her chin, swaying back and forth as she wobbled on uneven legs and glistening in the light from the window behind us. I had to get rid of it. I needed it removed from my field of vision before my brain exploded inside my skull.

Breathing heavily, I snagged the sleeve of her little baby suit and used it to wipe her face clean. "You um…you got a little something there, don't ya? Yeah, let me help you out with that."

Mission accomplished.

While I felt slightly less queasy, the poop remained, encased in her diaper and smeared against her baby-soft butt cheeks. I could smell it. It was pungent and it was foul and it was permeating the air. A crash, or a call, or something drew the attention of her father for the moment. My mind was too preoccupied with the bouncing bag of crab dangling from my shoulder to know for sure.

He stood from the couch. “Crap. Can you watch her for a minute?”

I wanted to grab him by the wrist, toss him to the floor and kick him square in the scones! What was he thinking? I wanted to watch his kid about as much as I wanted to sit though a weekend long retrospective of the collected films of Michael Bay!

The kid’s hand moved unexpected to my face and I froze. She was pawing at my cheek and poking me in the eye with the tips of her sticky fingers.

The balls on this kid!

The unmitigated gall!

She was blatantly invading my personal space! She was touching and slapping and, and looking me right in the eyes and doing it with a devilish grin so devilish that Beelzebub himself would have blushed.

The nerve!

The absolute moxie!

I was moments from screaming when her father returned to the couch, scooped her up and pulled her away. He tossed her over his shoulder and carried her to the next room to clean the feces from her flesh.

She was smiling at me the entire time.

While I can’t be for sure, I think she might have even given me the finger.

The audacity.

I don't get babies.

I never have and I never will.

I don’t understand the allure.

They are essentially human beings who mumble, cry and crap their own pants. I don’t even particularly care for human beings that don’t do any of that stuff.

You know what they call homeless guys on the street who do the same thing?

They call them crazy people.

As a society we’ve made it a point to catch crazy people and toss them into mental institutions, and deservedly so.

It should never be acceptable for human beings of any age, to stew in their own still-warm feces – even if they happen to be involved in some sort of feces-stewing competition or something.

Speaking of which, if such a thing exists, it really shouldn’t.

Please don’t let it exist.

ROSE TAKES IT OFF

I was a virgin throughout high school. I never poked unknowingly a pair of boobs. I never squeezed a buttock that wasn’t my own. I never kissed a girl on the lips, or the face, or the hand, or blew one in her direction from across a room. I never went on a date. I never even had a female look at me without screaming at me to stop staring before unleashing their boyfriends on me.

I was as pure as a newborn baby - with a slightly more impressive penis.

Only slightly, though.

In fact, the only parts of a naked woman I’d ever seen were either in my head or in any of the various pornographic materials I’d managed to catch a glimpse of over the years.

To say that I was a teeny bit hard up for human contact would be the understatement of the century - the equivalent of saying Michael Bay is a bad director.

While true, it doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.

My senior year in high school I earned a scholarship to an art college in Ohio. It wasn’t too long afterward that I learned the required courses of the first year included a figure drawing class – a nude figure drawing class.

Oh, yeah.

I was finally going to see some real life boobs!

I fully understand just how pathetic that last sentence must have read to the vast majority of you. I assure you, it sounded just as pathetic in my head. I’m not proud of it. It’s not something I’m going to put on my resume or tell the grandkids when I’m old. It’s out there and I can’t take it back. What’s done is done.

At the time I didn't even care that there would likely be a guy or two thrown into the mix. I’d been in locker rooms. I could suffer though a few eyefuls of penis for the chance to gaze upon the flesh and blood form of naked female.

It was going to be awesome - naked women awesome – which is the most absolute awesome of awesome when you’re a sad and lonely eighteen year-old.

Months passed.

During that time I moved to Ohio and I settled into the dorms at school. I was raring to go! I was chomping at the bit! I was chomping at the raring and going with the chomp!

I don’t know that that last one is supposed to mean and I really don’t care. That’s how excited I was.

It was the first day of the figure drawing class. I was at my desk with my pencils out and pad of paper opened. My fingers were tapping on the desk anxiously. They wouldn’t stop. The instructor said something along the lines of, "The model is getting ready. She'll be out in a moment."

She’ll?

He used the word “she’ll.”

Hells to the, yeah.

It was a woman - a girl – a female - a homo sapien with sexual organs entirely different than my own. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was going to have a womb.

‘Fo shizzle.

I slid my midsection a little more underneath the desk, on the off chance that something began to stir below. I wanted to be prepared.

Keepin’ it real, homie!

Moments later, the model walked into the room.

She was at least seventy-five.

Dayum.

In hobbled an elderly woman named, Rose. Her face was like a catcher’s mitt and her hair like an old bird’s nest. She was probably one of Thomas Jefferson’s mistresses and it was safe to assume she’d been getting discounts at Denny’s since the ‘80’s.

Rose dropped her robe and my world crumbled with it. She looked like a garbage bag filled with drippy-wet pee-poo diapers. She looked like a Barbie doll someone melted in the sun. She looked like a textbook definition of the word gravity. Needless to say, my fears about hiding my midsection were completely unfounded.

In fact, my penis took the initiative and hid itself.

I spent the next hour and a half drawing Rose in various positions I wished she’d never gotten into while listening to her complain that that she was cold, or aching, or that she needed a rest because the arthritis in her hands was acting up.

As I stared at the wrinkly exterior she called flesh and I called the Devil’s hammocks, all I could think was, "Those aren't supposed to be down that low, are they?”

I also never wanted to eat, or see someone eat, or be in the presence of a roast beef sandwich again.

Half way through the class the instructor gave everyone a break. While most of the students went outside to smoke a cigarette or throw up, or throw up then use the cigarette to burn their eyes, I sat in stunned silence. It’s not that I couldn’t move so much as I didn’t want to move.

I never wanted to move again.

With everyone gone, Rose put on her robe and started walking around the room, looking at the drawings everyone had done of her. She nodded her head at some and shook it at others.

Turns out she was a real art snob - you know, for a bag of old beef jerky.

She eventually made her way to me and stood behind me with one hand on her hip and the other scratching at those pesky black hairs dangling from her chin. There was little more than a thin sheen of nylon separating me from her wrinkled nakedness.

She was quiet for a minute, examining my work with her discerning, cataract-riddled eyes. When she’d seen all she needed to see, Rose leaned down and pinched my cheek from behind. "That's really wonderful, sweetie."

I'm not even kidding. She pinched my damn cheek.

Just like my Grandma used to do.

How I made it through the second half of class while comparing Rose to my nanny (who by a cruel piece of fate, also happened to have been named, Rose) is completely beyond me.

Rose, the nude model, was the very first woman who ever flashed me her junk while in something fairly close to the doggie-style position.

Rose reminded me of my grandma.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh at life.

Other times you want to throw a brick at it.