Babies: Mini People On The Outside, Demon Beings Within

I am sitting outside, smoking a bowl of shisha from my new hookah. I just finished my post about math, and I figure I will post one on what actually prompted me to come out here in the first place: a baby crying inside the house.

My older sister, Jenny, just had a baby a couple of months ago, and now that she is back at work, my mom watches the baby during the day and my niece and nephew when they get home from school until Jenny gets off work. I usually get home from work about 4 o'clock, and sit down to relax for a little bit. About the time I am getting settled, Skylar the baby loves to start crying. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing better than hearing a shrill cry from a baby piercing through your ears after being in a factory all day. I hope you picked up on the internet sarcasm there, because the truth is that almost everything is better than that.

In all honesty, I love all of my nieces and nephews. I just very much hate babies. I think on a list of things I don't like, babies fall somewhere between the Bubonic Plague and the smell of a dead animal in 100+ degree Tennessee heat, neither of which are good. The idea of a baby is great: Oh look, my very own Mini-Me! Except instead of he/she being awesome and being able to hang out and have sweet conversations with him/her, the baby just sits there, screams until his or her eyes fall out, and shits himself or herself. Oh, and pukes everywhere. Don't forget having to burb the thing, put Baby to sleep, wake up to Baby's crying at 4 a.m., and a host of other assorted grievances associated with their kind. Babies are in a perpetual state of their own filth, starting from shooting out the Eject hatch into the doctor's awaiting arms (to those less up to date on anatomical analogies, I believer the "birth canal" is this ejection hatch in Layman's terms) until they grasp the concept on potty training. They are just like old people, minus all of the cool stories, interesting outlooks on life, and ability to hold the least bit of a conversation.

Babies are all "me, me, me." Can we blame them, though? Evolutionarily speaking, we humans have somehow come a place where are young are even less defenseless than say, a baby deer (at least it has camouflage). Our young are completely dependent on our mother's and/or fathers for a great deal of time. They are so fragile! This is yet another reason that I dislike them. I feel like if I am in the same room as a baby, I pose a danger to it. What if i slip, fall, and crush the kid? I turn on the tv, and it falls on the baby? Woops, didn't see ya there, hoss; sorry for stepping on you. Damn, I let your neck loose for a second while holding you, and now you are dead because your bulbous head snapped your neck. See what I mean? I am literally terrified of holding children until their bones are more fully developed. This is probably the reason I am so leery to jump at the opportunity to hold babies!

Don't get me wrong, when babies are cool, I freaking love them! The fact that they can go from so incredibly happy to screaming little shitbags in a matter of picoseconds is what I don't like. This can come from anywhere, too: a door-slam, a loud voice, waking from a nap, a dirty diaper, being held by the wrong person, a dog's nose, a sock falling on them, a TV announcer, bugs, sunlight, heat, cold, a blanket or lack thereof, a book page turning, a firework off in the distance... You get the picture.

I think that is my biggest dislike about babies. They are so high maintenance. I am not one for high maintenance things. High school drama was never for me; potty training dogs is one of the only bad things about having a dog; petty fights I see my sisters have with their friends are all but nonexistent with mine.

It really amazes me how much patience some people have. I am usually a very patient person, but when it comes to babies, I give up almost immediately after they start crying and hand off the screaming tyke over to one of the womenfolk around. They are much better with that stuff that I am. I've been told once you have a kid, it is all different, but I have to believe that there will still be a point in time when my hypothetical future children are growing and drive me mad (crazy, not angry). I guess that time will come eventually, but for now I am happy to have a relatively baby-less life. Honestly, I don't really hate babies, I just strongly dislike them the majority of the time that I spend around them.