Babies vs Freshman Part 2

           Last week I posed the idea that babies were, and are, smarter than your typical college freshman. This week I will continue some of the adventures I’ve had with William and how he has continually proven himself to be tougher, more driven, and more ingenious than a vast majority of college freshman, much like the fierce Chihuahua is more ferocious than the simplistic Pug.

I have described William as a baby behemoth, a singular force of pure persistence that once rolling cannot be stopped. William will proceed to gather 2 or 3 more bruises after an initial bump in the same amount of time it takes a normal person to finish their cursing of the furniture that dared to get in the way of their toe in the first place.

Unlike the toe, which is the hands down champion of body part most bumped against things in adults, (followed closely by the ironically named funny bone) William’s danger zone is his head. There is probably not one table in the student lounge that hasn’t met his hard head at least once. In addition to the tumbles he takes from running at a speed faster than his legs will allow, as well as falls he takes from trying to climb objects, William takes a lot of damage, to the point of which I am amazed I don’t hear a slight pinging sound that his health is low. None of this phases him, it’s a rare case that one of these actions will cause him to cry, just give a startled look and then go right back to doing whatever it was he was doing.

Why is this? Why doesn’t he seem to be phased by anything, to not complain when he fails? It’s his drive. I’ve rarely seen someone pursue an object of their desire with such single minded determination. Only when his goal is taken away from him does he begin to cry, like the sandwich situation I mentioned in my last post. It’s much like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Boromir takes 3 arrows before going down, purely determined to keep going, to save the hobbits. Although the obstacles aren’t as pointy, and the goal isn’t as noble, William is a hard force to stop once he gets his big blue eyes on something

It’s this drive that gets him through when toughness alone will not. William is ingenious when determining how to reach his goals. Treasure for him is always up. If he can see the corner of something on top of a table, he gets it in his mind to possess it, or to at least find out what it is. But tables are high, and the chair he would normally use to get up is halfway under the table. He begins to grab chairs from all around, pushing them although they are twice his size. The chairs begin to form a path to the table, until he can climb atop them and see his prize. It was ingenious, this almost one and a half year old kid creating the means with which to reach a scrap of paper on the top of the table.

I’ve learned a lot by watching William, and I’ll share more as this blog goes on, but this short primer to this Juggernaut of a baby.