Bad Baby

It's Time to Admit it - Babies Are Cretins

My friend’s baby head-butted me the other day. It was an accident of course, so I didn’t call the police or anything. This time. Mind you, it just goes to show you that all that nonsense about babies being wickle human beings is precisely that. At this age they are no more than mindless cretins, and I mean that in a nice way. Come on, if babies had any sense of self-awareness or indeed any cognitive insight whatsoever, they would surely be thinking: “Oh my God, everyone else is fully clothed and I’m sprawled on my back in the nude, peeing!”


But they don’t. They just laugh it off. In fact scientists have proved that your sense of the ridiculous doesn’t become fully formed until one day in your late thirties, when after a few blank moments you suddenly recognise the middle-aged tit in the baseball cap reflected back at you from the window of Dixon’s.


I’m not very comfortable around babies, which is precisely why my friend plonked one into my arms. Parents love to scare the daylights out of childless people this way. They say things like, “Just keep an eye on young Rooney while I do the laundry.” And while you’re thinking to yourself, ‘ok, this can’t be all that different from making sure the scones don’t burn on top,’ they follow up with a list of conflicting instructions and a car load of equipment the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

“Now, this is the steriliser. Give him his first feed at four, his second feed at half-three, then lay him down but don’t put him on his back. Or his front. And for God’s sake don’t let him turn over in his sleep.”


By now you’re ignoring the instructions, which you can’t possibly begin to understand in any case, and simply concentrate on your own growing terror instead. “Why not? What happens if he turns over?”

“I said don’t let him turn over!”

“I didn’t! I mean I won’t! What do I feed it on?”