Toddlers are a different species

Jason Offutt

The kitchen smelled of bread.

A real estate agent once told me baking bread made a house seem more homey and easier to sell.

We weren’t selling our house; I just wanted a sandwich. I hoped no one walked in off the street and made an offer.

The kitchen timer rang and I grabbed my oven mitts.

“Gablah.”

The toddler stood as she always stood, at my feet.

My wife and I have given her a Hobbit name, Miss Underfoot.

She looked up and smiled with all five teeth.

“Daaabable.”

Babies are born knowing how to speak Klingonese.

“Hi, baby,” I said. “Step back.”

“Blah.”

I tried to scoot her away with my foot.

It didn’t work.

“Boblablah.”

“Hot,” I said. “It’s too hot.”

I picked her up, walked to the opposite end of the kitchen and sat her down.

“Mmmmmaaaa,” she screamed and started trotting back toward the oven.

I pulled the bread out and shut the door before she could crawl inside. That’s what she really wanted, you know.

Babies, much like cats, like to crawl into small spaces, like boxes, closets, under chairs, and apparently inside ovens.

She plopped onto the floor, safely outside the closed oven door, and screamed.

Tears ran down her face that had scrunched itself into a whining ball of rage. It was like The Day of No Grapes all over again.

Toddlers are some of the angriest humans on the planet.

Angrier than Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or at least angrier than Alec Baldwin at a Republican fundraiser.

The problem with toddlers is we never know what’s going to set them off.

For example, Miss Underfoot has flown into a crying rage at the following:

• I wouldn’t let her stand next to the open toilet while I peed.

• We gave her Cheerios.

• We didn’t give her Cheerios.

• We tried to give her Cheerios again.

• Her mother dressed her in something cute.

• I didn’t allow her to play with the cleaning supplies underneath the kitchen sink (by the way, the doors are securely childproofed).

• I took away the beer bottle she’d plucked from the recycling bin.

• We didn’t allow her to eat food off the kitchen floor.

• We allowed her to eat food out of a bowl on the kitchen floor (maybe it was because the bowl contained Cheerios).

• The Boy took his Xbox controller out of her sticky hands (toddlers hands are always sticky).

• I wouldn’t let her drool on my cell phone.

• Her mother wouldn’t let her drool on her cell phone.

• I told her the television remote control was not a chew toy.

• We wouldn’t let her lick the cat.

• I changed her diaper.

That is, of course, an incomplete list.

I left out the part about her meltdowns when we prevented her from eating cat food/spare change/Sriracha.

We’re good parents, kiddo. I promise.

Jason Offutt’s novel, “A Funeral Story,” is available at amazon.com.