My wife turns to me while we walk, side by each, fall leaves crunching under our sandals, and comments, "we were totally in to 21 Jump Street before any one else!" She pauses, snorts a half laugh with the realization, saying, "'we were in to it before any one else' - what are we, hipsters?"
I stop in my tracks. "Honey - we just went to a farmer's market. And then to a bar. With our baby. I have facial hair. We're carrying a case of PBR home right now. I think the least of our worries is whether we liked an 80's t.v. show before anyone else."
She looks at askance; "I meant 21 Jump Street, the movie."
"Oh." That's all I can manage. We start walking again. The case of Pabst is getting heavy.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
BEAUTIFUL SLUMBER
People have in mind this idea that "sleeping like a baby" is the highest level of somno-mastery; it's this almost hindu-buddhist notion that the best sleep requires you to return to the beginning of your developmental abilities, you return to your origin to become the best at something.
However, people are clearly talking out of their necks when they say that sleeping like a baby is so peaceful because they neglect to mention that sleeping infants sound weird, not only do they sound weird, they sound somehow menacing and terrifying.
Never mind that for almost the first trimester of life outside of the womb you'll panic every night at the weird sounds your sleeping baby makes, and then panic when she stops making them, worried sick that she isn't, or perhaps is, breathing, enough so that fathers have gone to technologically absurd lengths to find peace of mind about their breathing, or unbreathing, child (like a new parent's version of quantum entanglement with a new but somehow ancient Schrodinger's cat of neonatal apnea) - the baby's gasking for air (something a teen-aged mother once told me when I was a med student in Michigan - "my baby's gasking for air")... now it's too quiet, I don't know if she's breathing.
But everyone's forgotten to mention to you (except maybe scared teen mom from Michigan, sorry, sister, I shoulda listened to your wisdom then), sleepless, frightened new parent, is that babies sound totally ca-razy when they sleep - they sigh, they snort, they'll fart, they'll whimper, weep, then whimper-weep, then they'll make a particular ululation that I can only describe as the cry of a miniature tauntaun in heat, actually, she sounds like Daryl Hannah in Splash, she sounds like a weird mermaid, which is as alarming as it sounds, and then settle down again to leave you wondering, in the pitchy blackness of your once adults-only bedroom, is she breathing?
Apparently, sleeping like a baby means that you sleep and don't give a rat's ass about how totally weird and scary you sound to the people who are still awake around you.
However, people are clearly talking out of their necks when they say that sleeping like a baby is so peaceful because they neglect to mention that sleeping infants sound weird, not only do they sound weird, they sound somehow menacing and terrifying.
Never mind that for almost the first trimester of life outside of the womb you'll panic every night at the weird sounds your sleeping baby makes, and then panic when she stops making them, worried sick that she isn't, or perhaps is, breathing, enough so that fathers have gone to technologically absurd lengths to find peace of mind about their breathing, or unbreathing, child (like a new parent's version of quantum entanglement with a new but somehow ancient Schrodinger's cat of neonatal apnea) - the baby's gasking for air (something a teen-aged mother once told me when I was a med student in Michigan - "my baby's gasking for air")... now it's too quiet, I don't know if she's breathing.
But everyone's forgotten to mention to you (except maybe scared teen mom from Michigan, sorry, sister, I shoulda listened to your wisdom then), sleepless, frightened new parent, is that babies sound totally ca-razy when they sleep - they sigh, they snort, they'll fart, they'll whimper, weep, then whimper-weep, then they'll make a particular ululation that I can only describe as the cry of a miniature tauntaun in heat, actually, she sounds like Daryl Hannah in Splash, she sounds like a weird mermaid, which is as alarming as it sounds, and then settle down again to leave you wondering, in the pitchy blackness of your once adults-only bedroom, is she breathing?
Apparently, sleeping like a baby means that you sleep and don't give a rat's ass about how totally weird and scary you sound to the people who are still awake around you.
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