So what’s this thing with babies?
“Isn’t he adorable…”, “Ah just look at her beautiful little face…”, “Goochy-goochy-coo…”
No. This is just wrong. Nine months of waddling around like a penguin, God knows how long trying to squeeze it out, described by some (most?) as shitting a watermelon, and finally they hand you a tiny, purple, toothless, half-blind slime-covered squawking mess with a face like a screwed up crisp bag. Perhaps these compliments (on your finally having joined the ranks of the poor) are all planned to drag you from the horrific reality that everything you knew about life is about to go down the pan. If anyone had said my son looked like me at birth they’d have been repeatedly punched.
A baby, at birth, looks like Winston Churchill. Regardless of sex. OK, they look better when they’ve inflated a bit, or been ironed in the night by a friendly midwife (I assume this is how the wrinkles go), but we need some honesty here – here’s a list of suitable comments you can feel free to use the next time someone holds one of these objects in your face for approval. Feel free to use them as and when necessary:
“What is it?”
“Will it bite?”
“I’m sorry, will it grow out of it?”
“It looks like it smells.”
“Don’t worry, they can work wonders nowadays.”
“Do you want me to hold your chimp?”
“Of course I’ll hold him/her. Does he/she bounce?”
“Did you have it on purpose?”
This short selection of non-offensive phrases have served me well over the years, to the point where babies rarely get presented to me. Happy Days.
