To them, Cheerios are shrimp and juice is fine wine
You CAN LEARN A LOT
from a baby. When life gets boring, ours tumbles backward like a bowling pin and joyously kicks his legs in the air while yodeling. Try it sometime. Especially if you’re at work. They’ll think you’re fearless and gifted and probably give you your own division to run.
You can learn a lot from a baby. Ours knows three words, with which he can accomplish pretty much anything. One word is a noun. One is a sort of gerund. One is either an adverb or a hiccup, I can’t tell. He uses “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” to call people. He uses “aye” as his give-me word, as in “give me that magazine to rip up” or “give me your beer, I’d like to tip it over.” And, finally, he uses “boof” as a substitute for cat, dog, pretzel, kiss, cheese, cookie or toy. Sometimes, he also uses “boof” for more abstract concepts like love and selflessness. But that is rare. In most instances, the baby uses it for something he wants to put his mouth on.
Speaking of which, you can learn a lot from a baby about good food. To a baby, everything is potential food, including DVDs, coasters, all leather products and, in particular, women.
To his understanding, half the population is biologically capable of breast-feeding him. Out in public, he looks at people’s chests first, and then at their faces. I remind him how inappropriate that is in this day and age, and that unless he grows up to become president of the United States, this will not be tolerated. But he’s a free spirit and a stubborn student. Last week at Starbucks, he tried to order a breast-milk latte.
You can learn a lot from a baby. That when music plays, you should dance, even to PBS violin concertos and the miserable gutter-speak of rap. To a baby, everything that is not conversation is music: the growl of a Corvette, the grind of a can opener. Next door, the gardeners are blowing the driveway clean. The baby responds as if hearing Tchaikovsky for the first time. Dance, kid, dance.
You can learn a lot from a baby. That you should sleep when you are tired. That you should play when you’re awake. That you should wave goodbye to people whether they are coming or going, or merely sitting on a bench digesting lunch. Our baby waves at trees and gumball machines and fried chicken franchises. When the moon is out, he waves to that too, then screams “boof,” which in this case means cheese. Or, “Boof, aye-aye-aye.” As in “Cheese, please come to me.”
At the dinner table, you can learn a lot from a baby. That clothing is optional, apparently, and that juice is like wine. To our baby, Cheerios are shrimp. He drinks juice and eats Cheerios almost every day, then drops some to the dog, like a tip, for keeping the floor beneath him so nice and clean.
At the park, you can learn a lot from a baby. That a swing is the happiest place you could possibly be, and that birds are flying over constantly, and you should acknowledge them whenever possible. To a baby, a city park is like a nightclub. You meet other babies of similar interests. It’s just reassuring to be among them, dancing in unison to the music of passing trucks. Munching on the playground wood chips. Losing one sock.
Many successful people have learned a lot from babies. Britney Spears dresses like one. Barry Bonds behaves like one. Jessica Simpson whines like one.
For the rest of us, though, we take the best that babies have to offer. The gentleness. The joie de vivre. The way every day seems like Super Bowl Sunday.
During his first haircut, our baby held the hairdresser’s hand as she clipped his curls, smiling at her constantly, probably wondering if she might be available for lunch.
At the supermarket, he makes eye contact with everyone he passes and smiles just for the sake of smiling, or because an Oreo cookie just fell down his shorts.
“There’s a cookie in my clothing!” he screams with glee, then bounces up and down in the shopping cart. “Ba-ba-ba-ba boof!”
And if we can’t learn a little something from that, Lord help us.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
