from boob to nuts

cole odell at Mountain of Judgment (a smaller and less thoughtful blog than the one you are currently reading) recently served up this dandy post, filthy with genius, wherein he ponders his child's propensity to punch dad in the nuts.

what is it about kids that from the very crepuscular dawning of consciousness they are hellbent on inflicting violence upon their parents? is it darwinian? freudian? something i said? whatever it is, there's something terribly greco-tragic about the whole thing.

take for example our own child: she loves to pull your hair. on a number of occasions she has dug her fingernails, which grow at the speed of light squared, directly into my retina. the other day she reached into my mouth and managed to find a festering canker sore, which she dutifully clawed.

last night as she sat in her little bathtub, splishing and splashing, she grabbed the washcloth from me. she began rigorously sucking on the washcloth. then she bit down hard on the washcloth and slowly dragged it through her gritted teeth. then she did it again, scraped the hapless thing through her clenched fangs as if she were eating an artichoke or edamame. mrs nice guy turned to me and said: "LOOK! that's exactly what she does to my tits."

but wait, there's more. my wife's tender womanparts are not the only sensitive bits around here to receive the furious scorn of our spawn. she's a growing girl, our baby is. just like her old man, she's about 26 inches long now. she's also chock full of vim and vinegar. she shrieks, she flaps her arms, she kicks her legs. this last one is particularly dangerous. especially when the testicle-having half of the parental unit is wearing the bjorn. you see where i am going here: her legs, which are prone to spontaneous whirligigging, dangle to the exact spot on my body from whence she first swam into being as tadpole gamete.

occasionally when i am wearing her in the bjorn, i have to powder my nose -- hey, it's been known to happen. anyway, without fail i feel like i am playing miniature golf, trying to project a stream through the windmill of her kicking feet. but that's not the worst, as you can imagine. the worst is, to be blunt, when out of nowhere she delivers a swift roundhouse to my nuts. she does pirouettes on my scrotum. she uses my beanbag as a trampoline. usually i black out before the pain becomes too unbearable.

so there you have it. i was certainly expecting emotional abuse from my children. but i never would have guessed there would be such savage physical beatdowns. and she can't even walk yet!

needless to say, i am no longer as enthusiastic about the baby bjorn as i once was.