Babies are like college students
Jason Offutt
When our eight-month-old was smaller, my wife and I carried her places in a detachable car seat.
Yep, the thing just unlatched from the base and we didn’t have to wake the baby by unhooking the straps that, that, were built by, I don’t know, NASA or something.
Car seats are a lot different than they were when I was a kid. Back then a car seat was called a lap.
The carrier fit right down into the shopping cart basket and the baby snoozed away.
Brilliant.
Car seat designers must be parents because parents know the only thing they can get done while the baby’s awake is wish there was more vodka in the house.
And since grocery shopping with a wide-awake infant is as fun as listening to tennis shoes in the dryer, this was perfect.
Thank you, car seat people.
The baby usually didn’t wake until the dairy aisle, and by then we were too far into grocery shopping for her to stop us by whining for food, or whining to remove a poopy diaper.
Don’t let anyone fool you, babies are high maintenance.
During one trip to the store, when the girl woke looking around like she’d been transported to another planet, my wife and I realized something important about babies — they’re a lot like college students.
• They drink from a bottle.
• They often wake and have no idea where they are, or how they got there.
• They love SpongeBob SquarePants.
• They occasionally have problems walking.
• Neither of them opens a book on their own.
• When they do, they’ve been known to fall asleep and drool on it.
• Even at their crankiest, hand one a cell phone and they immediately get quiet.
• Staying awake during the day is hard.
• Staying awake at night is not.
• Two a.m. is their favorite time to eat.
• Their favorite food is macaroni and cheese.
• Neither can write in cursive.
• They think the walk-in beer fridge at the grocery store is pretty neat.
• They giggle when they fart.
• They wear pajamas all day, even in public.
• They often ignore their parent’s advice.
(OK, so “No, no. Hot, hot,” isn’t quite, “The credit card is for emergencies only,” but it’s close).
• They’re all fascinated by boobs.
The baby’s older now, and can sit by herself in the child seat in the front of the basket. She doesn’t pass out as much this way, and she doesn’t look so confused all the time, so maybe she’s in her second semester of her junior year of infantness.
Although there are relapses with the bottle, and the walking is still suspect, she’s growing up fast.
Maybe too fast.
With her thin hair, her love for applesauce, and all the babbling at the window (I can’t understand a thing she says, but I’m pretty sure she’s telling those damn kids to stay off our lawn), she may have graduated from College Student and shot straight to Crotchety Old Man.
I hope she gets her age figured out by the time she’s 10.
Jason Offutt’s novel, “A Funeral Story,” is available at amazon.com.
