BABY MAN
There is a literal truthfulness to children that is not only
refreshing but shows you how much we change as humans as we age. As adults we
find ourselves evading the truth to spare other people’s feelings, opting for a fib to make our lives easier (unless you're in politics and then it's par for the course), and speaking in euphemisms and ambiguity for fear
of retribution. It’s downright exhausting when you think about it.
But when it comes to children, they call it as they see it –
some adults of course do this, and are labeled abrasive or socially
dysfunctional, a very few walk away scot-free with a ‘refreshing’ moniker
slapped on their forehead. The King at the moment is noticing those around him
in a big way; the only problem is at the moment he's still confusing his pronouns and 'question words'. So he walks down the street, points at men and
women and hollers, ‘What’s that?!’ Trust me, he gets more than a few looks and
giggles when he does this.
The other day we were in a shop and there was a man working behind the till. There was another man in front of the till paying for
his items who was a bit taller than the other man. The King sized them both up, after asking me ‘what’s that’ of
course, and then shouted ‘Mama, there’s a man.’ Pointing at the man in front of
the counter. He then pointed to the shorter of the two and said in his matter a fact way,
‘and there’s a baby man!’ Yes, these are the moments that embarrass the hell
out of you and make you burst out laughing at the same time. And of course
everyone has the parental story of their child saying something frighteningly
frank and literal to members of the general public. Sometimes it’s met with smiles and
adoring gazes, other times, not so much. In fact, I can remember when I was young declaring (loudly) that an overweight woman I saw in a store had a baby in her belly. She of course did not appreciate it as she was not pregnant.
And of course every time the King does say something in his blatantly literal way, I can’t help but think how far we’ve come from literal language when it comes to describing our fellow human beings (and still remaining socially acceptable of course).
Don’t get me wrong; sometimes this is for a very good reason. We humans love
labels and sometimes they can be brutal and cruel, and you wish that the
descriptive adjective would be thrown out with the bathwater. But other times,
you realize that we are fast becoming a society cloaked in a ball of euphemisms to
hide what is blatantly obvious. Perhaps we have
the advertising industry to blame for some of this. As the King sees it, at the
moment hair is ‘big’ or ‘small.’ His aunt rocks the most incredible afro in the world and he has deemed it gloriously 'big.' Of course the advertising world has a litany
of words to describe hair but big is not usually among them. They prefer sexy words like voluminous and glossy.
I suppose all this gets me thinking of the way in which we
differentiate between a truth, a lie and an appropriate evasion, if you will.
When you’re raising kids, you spend many years telling them they cannot tell a
lie, and the truth is tantamount (and in the same breath you tell them Santa Claus exists). And then, when you find yourself wading
through the above territory, you find yourself teaching them to embrace more
‘appropriate’ versions of the truth that are socially acceptable. ‘She’s not
fat sweetheart, she’s full-bodied.’ [Then again, she wouldn’t be anything cause you’re certainly not supposed to
label people by their size]. Then again, how do you teach your children to understand
descriptions? I mean, who knows, the King might be a newspaper journalist
(hahhhhaaaa as if print media will be around in twenty years!), he certainly
would have to know his way around descriptively exact language.
So, you find yourself telling your kids what they can and
can’t say and how to describe things in a million different ways that are
socially acceptable, and yet, often not literal. So for now, short men are baby
men. And why the hell not, sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
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