Kid Amnesiac

Today Matt witnessed Simon’s first demonstration of true fear. I was at the grocery and Matt was playing with Simon in the living room. It’s fall now, and despite it still being 80 degrees outside, certain fall-like things are beginning to happen, including various creepy crawlers trying to make a home inside our house.

One such creepy crawler was a spider that scurried across the carpet in front of them as they played. Matt is no fan of spiders and was no doubt uneasy around this very fast moving specimen.  According to Matt, Simon was downright hysterical. He took one look at that spider and then shrieked, cried, and raised his arms for Matt to pick him up and get him away from it.

This reaction is really interesting, because normally Simon looks at any new creature as either amusing or a potential new friend. He’s been in love with our cats from day one. The first time a (big) dog ran up to his stroller in the park and licked his face, he giggled. He’s either oblivious or enthralled with animals at the zoo.  In fact, I’ve hardly ever seen him look scared at anything or anyone.

As Simon is not quite one and has never encountered a spider before, this reaction could not have had anything to do with a prior bad experience with spiders. So not a learned response. And Matt swears that Simon got hysterical before he had a chance to get that way himself. So not an example of Simon modeling a parent’s behavior.

That leaves us with the explanation that Simon has an innate fear of spiders. One that, for the record, he inherited from his father, as they don’t bother me much at all.

Not in the Caddyshack sense of the sentence, but in the the baby toy sense.

One of Evie’s great yard-sale finds of the summer was a toy shaped something like a short volumetric flask. The opening at the top was about the circumference of a golf ball, and the toy came with three balls to drop down the hole. The reward for getting the ball in the flask is that, upon contact with the bottom, a little song plays. I like this toy a lot and have played with it quite a bit, always eager to hear which song it will play for me next.

Simon was less enthused. He’d grab the balls, bang the balls together, taste the balls, and–lately at least–throw the balls. Until last night. For Labor Day, Matt and I worked (putting the “labor” in Labor Day), then headed over to the Whitworths’ for dinner. The guys ran out to pick up food, and Evie, Barb, and I sat down to play with Simon. Within a minute or less, as though he had been doing this his entire life, he picked up a ball, held it over the toy’s rim, and released just right to have the ball go in.

As if to demonstrate it was no fluke, he repeated the trick at least two more times. We were so proud! Then the guys returned and we excitedly went to show them Simon’s new trick. “I’m no trained seal,” Simon seemed to say as he grabbed the balls, banged the balls together, tasted the balls, and threw the balls.

I felt like the sad sap in the famous Warner Brothers cartoon whose singing, dancing frog merely sits and croaks in front of everyone but its owner. In fact, at one point he finally did repeat the trick, but Jim was in another room and Matt had his head turned. Amazing.

Simon finally made an honest mom out of me after dinner. He also cruised a bit on the couch, stood for several minutes (supported by the couch), and ate his first watermelon. All in all, a big and satisfying day for a baby.

Once upon a time, I watched way too much television. Much of that television was pure junk TV, like America’s Next Top Model, but some of it was junk TV disguised as something educational. If you’ve watched much of the programming on the science or history channels, you are well aware that many of these programs feature hokey reenactments of bad science and/or bad history.

One such program, a favorite of mine, is a show about the aquatic ape. To my way of thinking, the Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) is the chindogu of evolutionary science. That is, just as chindogu or “unuseless inventions” solve a real problem by way of an invention that causes so many concomitant problems as to render the solution useless*, the AAT has so many holes in it, that it fails to solve the problem it was designed to shed light on.

Let’s back up a minute. The basic thesis behind the AAT is that it seems unlikely (to AAT proponents anyway) that modern humans developed on the savanna, and that a period or periods of aquatic life can account for some key differences between humans and apes. Some of these features include humans’ relative lack of body hair, large breasts, and downturned nostrils.  Of course, most aquatic creatures don’t have human sweat glands or enlarged breasts either, thus shooting some holes in the AAT. To say nothing of the fact that humans are non-native swimmers, which really puts the kibosh on it.

But the part of the AAT that is the most intriguing and almost persuasive–at least until you think about it for more than five seconds–is bipedalism. Why would an ape on the savanna ever stand on two feet? Doesn’t it make more sense that this trait would develop in an environment where buoyancy would encourage bipedalism and a watery surrounding would make being on all fours less desirable?

Eh, probably not. Chimps and gorillas and orangutans can all stand on two feet. They just usually choose not to. What’s more, their preference for tree-swinging (orangutans) and knuckle walking (chims and gorillas) may be themselves evolutionary developments that place a premium on speed.

And what does all of this have to do with Simon? So glad you asked. Today at the pool, after three or four failed attempts on previous outings, I got Simon in the baby raft. At first, he cried.  He was leaning forward in the raft, and that was way too much like tummy time for his liking. But then, encouraged by a desire to keep his face dry and empowered by buoyancy, Simon stood up and moved from one side of the baby pool to another.

Imagine that, his face seemed to say, I can actually stand up and move from point A to point B without being carried. Amazing! And certainly nothing he’s considered home on terra firma.

Based on this exercise, I’ve decided that while the AAT may be a bunch of unscientific speculation, buoyancy may well be what finally encourages Simon to stand and walk. All of which is disconcerting because I leave town next Friday and the pool closes for the season next Saturday.

Wonder how high I can fill the tub….

* An example of a perfectly chindogu invention is a tongue cover designed to prevent burns from hot food. Of course, if you actually use this sucker, you also won’t be able to taste your food, which takes away some of the pleasure. For more chindogu, see the book by the same name by Kenji Kawakami. And prepare to laugh yourself sick.