versus Babysitting

I like kids, I really do.  They are such magical creatures capable of doing and saying anything at anytime as they come to grips with the world around them and the many odd, screwball, and just plain stupid things we “grown-ups” do.  I don’t have any children of my own, which is probably a good thing for the children population at large, but I do have more than a few nephlings and numerous friends similarly blessed and have, on occasion, been asked to spare a few hours here and there to watch over them.  As a man with the loving (I think) nickname of Goofy Guncle Gabe, I’m pretty much obligated to take up the challenge.
Now, I admit, I do have more than my share of nutball-ish characteristics – even more so when I write – but when it comes the welfare and safety of Little Ones in my charge, I am always very serious.  Yeah, I’m all for laughing as much as humanly possible and am usually willing to burst into horrific silly dances and allow my left hand abuse my own face if it will provoke an unrestrained giggle, but I am just as quick to pull 8” steak-knives out of their pudgy little fingers or drag them off the banister before they can dive off.  Still, I’m more useless than a helmet on a kamikaze pilot when it comes to an infant wailing harder than an air-raid siren simply because I am NOT HER MOTHER!
My first mistake in this fiasco was to allow the baby to physically watch her mother walk out the door.  It is a well known fact that you never ever EVER ever let a baby watch a parent leave, and you can add a couple hundred more “ever”s to that if the parent in question is the mother.  It is also a well known fact that you are supposed bring the baby into a completely sound-proof and windowless bunker that is a minimum safe distance 50 feet below ground to prevent any possible chance of seeing the parents leave, and preferably equipped with an air-filtration system that can eliminate any Mom-scent that an infants heightened “Mom Detection System” (aka – the 5 senses) has been known to pick up through 10 inches of concrete.  But, like the idiot I am, I actually waved her little hand at her mother and said, “Buh-bye, Mommy!  We are going to have soooo much fun!  Yay!” despite the fact that she was emitting a solid High C-note at 100 decibels.
Like any good babysitter, I offered her comforting coos and tried to strike up various babytalk conversations – “Ooobie woobie too boo?  Tubba moopie doo?  Wah wah choo!  Yay!” – but that didn’t work.  Then I tried zooming her around like she was a WWII open-prop fighter plane, firing her legs like the machine guns they had become, and destroyed countless Nazi made stuffed animals and teething rings.  Okay, I probably had more fun with that than she did, but I really thought it would work.
After a good while of the incessant screaming it occurred to me that perhaps she wasn’t merely angry that her mother left, maybe something else was at work.  So, I checked the usual items on the list:  Diaper was dry and free of poopie stink.  I couldn’t get her head to stop swaying back and forth with her shrieks long enough to get a bottle in her mouth, so she wasn’t hungry.  I held her up to the light and made sure there were no forks, chopsticks, or random plastic toys jutting out of her skin – Hey, babies do weird things when you least expect.  It seemed reasonable at the time.  There was no way I could tell if she had a fever at this point because she was straining so hard to cry I was half expecting her tears to fly from her eyes like little missiles meant to do me harm.  Nope, I had a completely inconsolable infant in my lap and I had no idea what to do next.
Ever seen those cartoons with a crying baby and they are drawn in such a way that all you can see of them is their nose, one tooth sticking out at a funny angle and a black hole with pink uvula bouncing around?  Yeah, that’s really damn accurate.
I decided I’d take the opportunity to look at this scientifically.  And I mean that literally.  I could practically see into her stomach, her mouth was that wide open.  I mean, I felt like I was seeing parts of human anatomy that weren’t meant to be seen without a gauze mask, sterile gloves and an army of trained professionals pointing things out:
“And if you look up here,” says a supremely knowledgeable doctor that, somehow, I hadn’t noticed before, “you can see the nasal passage, retinal nerves and cerebral cortex.”
“Neat,” says me.
“Yes, it is.  This is how we learned the human body back in the olden days before shows like Grey’s Anatomy or E.R.”
“Ah.” I say, unable to imagine such a world.  “What’s this down here?”
“What?  That green squelchy-looking thing?  That’s the spleen.”
“No, I know that’s the spleen,” I say, annoyed he thought I didn’t know what a spleen looks like.  “What is that weird little black throbbing thing sitting on top of that other bigger blobby pulsating thing?”
“Oh, the big organ is the kidney and that little black one is her adrenal gland.”
“It looks like its going haywire.”
“Well, she is crying like a banshee.  That takes some juice.”
“I see.  What happens if it explodes?”
“It won’t.  It’s only working at half capacity right now.”
“Oh.  Crap.”
This is when, with an almighty shudder, the baby grips the front of my shirt and pulls herself tightly around my neck as though she were going to punish me with hugs and I lost sight of the inner working of her body.  She somehow managed to crank up the volume to 120 decibels - which is louder than Speaker Seats at a rock concert – and I could actually feel a disruption in my logical thinking place or whatever its called.
Within seconds of holding the baby against my shoulder hers tears had completely soaked my shirt.  Actually, it wasn’t only tears…there was some snot involved.  In fact, there was probably a 3:1 snot to tear ratio happening here.  Where does all this come from?  And what purpose does it serve?  I was under the impression that nasal mucus was a viscous membrane designed to collect and trap dust particles to prevent them from traveling to the lungs and potentially cause infections.  But on a hysterically crying baby?  It just makes them all gooey!  Perhaps, it was to be a self-defense mechanism against certain types of predators, such as the Cheek-Pinching Neighbor.  And if you don’t wipe it up quickly enough it can harden in a kind of glue.  I’m quite sure there is a small Wyoming town without shade trees now because I needed them to make tissues, but I had to else her face would have permanently become fastened to my shoulder!  Her parents would have walked in the door and caught me using a spatula trying to pry their darling daughter’s features from my shirt.  No way am I going to try explaining that one.

So, with no other option, I grab the tissues and cleaned her up.  Or tried to, at any rate.  She wanted nothing to do with being clean, particularly if it meant removing a layer or two of her carefully arranged mucus mask.  Her only defense against me – and it was a powerful defense, mind you – was to take the volume up another notch, into the 140 decibel range, which, incidentally, has blown past the human threshold for pain (130 decibels) and gone right to the Military Jet Takeoff level.  Another 20 dbs and we’re looking at the instant perforation of the ear drum – but then again, another 20 dbs and that might be a blessing.
Okay, so now I’ve been enduring this auditory assault for who knows how long, my shirt is caked with slimy moisture and there is no let up in sight.  I don’t know what to do, because I’ve never dealt with anything like this before.  Normally I can get kids to be quiet and bemused if not entirely entertained with a well-timed Wacky Walk or exaggerate the pain caused from one of their High-Fives.  But I couldn’t even think properly anymore and I was reaching the point at which I just wanted her to be quiet.  What to do, what to do?
New plan: Sing to the baby!
Plan utterly fails.
I discovered 2 very important facts about how sound damages the brain.  First, it destroys all knowledge of good music and leaves you with the dregs of style and class, preventing you from thinking about and choosing the most appropriate song to whatever situation you are in.  Second, you don’t care; you are simply glad you can remember to say anything beyond, “The BELLS!   THE BELLS!!”  In this case, all my mind was left with was…*shudder, shudder*…Vanilla Ice.
She screamed all the louder and I can’t blame her.
Would nothing work on this child?  Nothing was wrong with her, she was simply crying like it was the end of the world because her mother was gone.  Wait a second…what if…what if she was right?  What if the world was ending?  I mean, right then and all she wanted was to hold her mommy one last time?  Why else would she be crying so hard?  Its not like she would lie about something like that, she was only a year old!  Do babies even know how to lie?  I don’t think so.  I mean, what could they gain by it?

Dramatization of Lying Baby

       “Why are you crying, Baby?” asked Mommy.
“Because I’ve gone and pooped my shorts!” replies Baby.
“Okay, let me change you.  Hey!  You’re diaper is clean!”
“I lied!  Ha HA!  I was really hungry but I fooled you!  Now powder my bottom again!”
“Fine, here’s a bottle, if you’re hungry.”
“Nope.  I lied again!  I’m neither hungry nor did I soil myself.  I need you to tickle me, right now!!”
“Fine…”
“Hee hee!  STOP TOUCHING ME THIS INSTANT!  I lied to you about wanting to be tickled.  I actually just diddled in my diaper.  Change me!!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did, actually.  It’s quite soggy down there.”
“No, its completely dry.”
“I swear, I’m as wet as a lobster tank!”
“Shut up, Baby.”

See?  Nothing good comes out of a fibbing infant, so she must be telling the truth about the world ending!  Holy God, what do I do?  I…I need to call my mother!  She’ll know what to do!  Mom’s always know…that’s why they are moms!   Where’s my cell phone…no service!  Damn it!  I don’t want the world to end.  I don’t want to die.  I don’t want the last song I’ll ever sing to be “Ice Ice Baby!”  I’ll protect you baby, I won’t let you die!  I’m your babysitter, damn it!  We’ll get through this!
And so, that’s how the baby’s parents came to find me huddled in the bathtub with a saucepan on my head, rocking back and forth with their child in my arms and singing “Row, row, row your boat,” at the top of my lungs.
The sight of her parents produced a silence in the air it now felt like a void in the world.  She reached out to her mommy and they embraced like only a mother and child can.  Then, just before her father threatened me with pepper spray until I left and promised never to return, the baby smiled at me.
Awwwww…babies are so cute!