The Story About the Toddler, Volume 10.

The Story About the Toddler, Volume 10.
by Jeff Vogel

Now our daughter Cordelia is 23 months old and getting close to her second
birthday. She will soon be the age at which I once thought babies started
showing human characteristics. I grew up with almost no exposure to infants. I
always knew that babies were inert lumps before their first birthdays and
freaked-out, infuriating, little psychos after their second birthday, but I
never really gave any thought to the time between those two milestones.

I guess I always thought that one-year olds were like larger infants. Heavier
lumps, producing more crap and drool, who suddenly one day opened their eyes
wide and said, "Hello, father. I am ready for you to raise me know. And where
the **** is my XBox?"

This doesn't happen. Instead, the development of actual humanity is a long,
slow process, taking place in an infinity of tiny, nearly invisible steps which
parents think non-parents will find interesting.

For example, this month, Cordelia began to spend long amounts of time alone
amusing herself. She started to fly into a rage when someone tried to help her
do something she was trying to figure out on her own. And she began to turn on
the Nintendo every chance she got. These three things provide more strong
evidence that she is actually my daughter.

She has also picked up the unfortunate toddler habit of punching people when
she gets angry. This is bad. Fortunately, merely saying "No!" to her in a loud
voice is enough to cause her to instantly collapse and shed tears of remorse. I
am enjoying having this power over her, in moderation. I suspect that I will
never again be able to so easily subdue her. Or anyone, for that matter.

* Experiencing Halloween. Us, Not Her.

Recently, I thought that one advantage of having children is that you get to
see things again through new eyes. Things that might have seemed asinine or
dull before, like blowing bubbles, become fun again. I suspected, however, that
this might just be because having a child makes you retarded.

Halloween made me realize that the second theory is true.

We took our toddler trick or treating for the first time. And, since Cordelia
was only 22 months old and could not possibly comprehend what was going on,
that meant that, basically, My wife and I went trick or treating for the first
time in decades. We used our daughter as a badge of legitimacy. We would drag
her up to the door, wave her at the adults, and collect the candy for later
consumption by us.

Cordelia did participate. When she realized she was able to grab and take away
the objects in the bowls held out to her, she acted as any person whose mental
and physical capabilites far outpaced her moral sense would. She grabbed as
much candy as she could and howled in anger when we dragged her away.

And then, when we got home, my wife and I gobbled down all her candy, while she
stared uncomprehendingly. This is really the only year we will be able to steal
all of our child's candy without complaint, and we took it. The alternative was
letting a two-year old eat five pounds of sugar. This would have been
hilarious, but a little irresponsible.

Of course, the people who got the most out of it were the adults in the houses.
They thought Cordelia was adorable. One household was playing host to an
elderly couple visiting from Norway. They were fascinated by the custom of
trick-or-treating and insisted we come inside to be questioned and
photographed. I can only imagine how they describe the event when they get
home:

"You can't imagine! It was just like everyone said!"
"Yes! They send their children out after dark to beg for food."
"But Inge, have they no dignity?"
"Look at this pictures. This is what happens without Socialism!"
"We should send these pictures to our fine Norwegian investigative
journalists."
"Maybe the next night they send their children out to beg for affordable health
care!"

Also, one woman was giving out raisins and string cheese. What the ****? It
made me wish Cordelia was old enough to throw eggs.

* Things It Is Important To Get Out Of Your System In-between When Your Child
Loves the Teletubbies and When She Can Understand What You Are Saying

"Remember, you grab the Teletubby around the chest and shake it until its spine
snaps. Then you can feed."

"No, honey. Teletubbies aren't really raised for their meat. They're raised for
their fur. What do you think Barney costumes are made of?"

* Unnecessary Additional Suffering

Cordelia was watching Elmo on Sesame Street. I was reclined on the couch,
trying to compose my own private thoughts.

Then, when I had finally managed to block out Elmo's shrill, condescending
voice, the Backstreet Boys came on and started singing to him.

Watching Elmo be joined by the Backstreet Boys is like having the person who is
repeatedly kicking you in the balls suddenly say, "Oh. I'm sorry. I forgot to
set you on fire first."

* Toddlers Get To Do All the Fun Things

Cordelia has developed another habit. When a song starts during Sesame Street
and her mother or I sing along, she flies into a rage. She will scream, throw
objects, try to put her hands over our mouths and, if necessary, physically
attack us.

I envy her so much. There have been so many times when I wanted to do this.
Singing along to musicals is savage, brutish behavior, the sign of being no
more than a mere beast. The only worse crime is quoting along with the The
Princess Bride, which should be punished with immediate tear gassing.

Singing along with musicals makes a person low and base, no better than a dirty
Rocky Horror fan. It is true. Children do have much to teach us.

* Cordelia's Vocabulary Update

Though she knows many words by now, here are the ones that occur most often in
her little vocabulary of incoherency:

"Yeah."
"Hi!"
"OK!"
"Ewwww."
"Ow."
"Wow!"
"Uh oh."
"Yay!"
"Hey!"

Note the lack of actual words.

Facing her crushing, incoherent subliteracy is made more difficult by the fact
that I am completely responsible. I am working hard to purge the words "dunno",
"yeah", and "gonna'" from my vocabulary. I have no problem with her saying
"****", but if she becomes one of those kids who says "like" three times in
every sentence, I'm takin' her out.

* Forcing Socialization With An Iron Fist

Other people have such friendly children.

So the family is in Target, looking for some bracket or something I can use to
keep Cordelia from pulling a bookshelf down on herself, thus doing irreparable
damage to both her and my old Dungeons and Dragons modules. Some guy's toddler
girl runs up to Cordelia and says "Hi!"

Cordelia is a large baby. She looks like she has already devoured two smaller
babies. This sucks, because it makes her look older than she is. Combine this
with a lack of coherence and social skills appropriate to her age, and you get
a situation where everyone we meet on the street thinks she is developmentally
challenged.

Anyway, this girl approaches Cordelia, her dad following close behind. The girl
is both older and smaller than Cordelia. She says "Hi!", points her finger
right in Cordelia's face, and says "Baby!" And Cordelia, as always, can't
decide whether to ignore this little nit, hit her, or eat her.

I should also mention that this other baby is frighteningly ugly. Hideous
enough to make me suspect that the reason for her approach is to vampirically
leech off some of Cordelia's cuteness. Because she sure didn't get any
attractive features from the middle-aged lump of semi-manhood lumbering up
behind her. It looked like all of the nutrients she was supposedly absorbing to
grow large and get hair went instead to giving her this enormous, angular
skull.

Anyway, his kid points at my kid and chatters, and Cordelia looks desperately
uncomfortable and like she was wishing she was far, far away. Which is pretty
much how I react to strangers. I, in general, hate people.

This is why I have resolved to give my daughter more opportunities to be around
people her age. Not because I want her to keep from being bored and annoyed by
most people. I'm fine with that. But because she shouldn't dislike them until
she learns the many good, valid reasons why she should dislike them. Just
starting out innately loathing them seems like cheating, somehow.

Finally, the dad grabs his little troglodyte and drags her away. Before he
goes, though, he looked at Cordelia's pacifier and said "My daughter never used
one of those." It is greatly to my credit that I kept from saying, "Perhaps you
should have. It would have covered up some of her face."

* So We Are Beginning Socialization

We are now repeatedly exposing Cordelia to two other small children, the
offspring of our friends. One is a little girl, slightly older, shy, and
retiring. Cordelia takes her things, eats her food, and just generally
steamrolls over her. The other is a boy about a year older, old enough to crush
toddlers at will and not old enough to understand how bone-stupid they are.
Cordelia occasionally gets flattened by him.

Between the two, Cordelia is learning the two most important lessons for
dealing with other humans:

i. Crush the weak.
ii. Submit to the strong.

Somehow, I think she's going to be all right.

###

(Want the rest of the story? http://www.ironycentral.com. Copyright 2003, Jeff
Vogel. Fa la la la la.)

- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software, Inc.
Award-winning fantasy role-playing games for Windows and Macintosh.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com