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. 

Post 1: Babies and Freshmen

It is an incontestable fact that babies are vampires. No, not sparkle in the sunlight, fight werewolves, Mormon vampires, but life sucking, sleep inducing, energy vampires. I believe this as a fact because the more tired I get, the more energetic he seems to get. Although this has nothing to do with this post specifically, I thought it best to say what happens on a day I am feeling 100%, as opposed to the story about the day I watched William during my girlfriends freshman orientation for college.

The day started early. I live over an hour away from my girlfriend and so to get her to a 10 o’clock event I had to wake up around 7. I know many of you may not pity my 7 o’clock woes, and may persist that I will need to get used to it, but it’s summer, and as a student in the summer I stay up late and wake up late. It’s all part of the college student circle of life.

I woke up with a headache and a sore throat, the beginning of a continuing summer cold that has dogged me for days afterwards. I made my way down to her house, and from there to her school. Her school is nothing new to me. She is taking summer classes before her freshman year, so we know the ins and outs of the building rather well. The typical school day would go like this. We’d get to school, hang out with each other in the student lounge until her class started, she’d go to class, and then William and I would hang out in the student lounge as we waited for her night classes to end. The people at the school were great about it, and seemed to understand the plight of a college student trying to find a place for his girlfriend’s baby to run around out of the summer heat that didn’t involve indoor fun parks or fast food purchases.

Again, on a normal summer class night this worked great. No one was there on a summer night, and the ones that were there on average were pro-baby, finding the somewhat annoyance of a babbling baby offset entirely by the adorableness that is William. Freshman orientation was not a normal day. My girlfriend and I parted ways as soon as we entered the door. With a kiss she went to orientation, William and I went to the student lounge.

            In the student lounge we stayed until something happened I should have expected: the catering came in.  At first, like anyone who is not one year old would think, I thought nothing of it. It was a guy, doing his job, and I was much happier playing “Please nap so Scotty can read” with William.
        That was not at all what William saw. To his mind this man with the cart full of boxes was a wizard who could make sandwiches appear from cardboard boxes, magic sandwiches that he placed upon the magic tables that he could reach using magic chairs, by means of magic.

William made a dash for the tables that were now filling with sandwich platters. His short, chubby legs propelled him with a speed that I had not thought possible until I had met this solid baby behemoth some months before. I was used to it now, and knew I could reach him before any of the magic sandwiches he so desired ended up falling upon his noggin. I sat and watched as he touched the platters, an occasional “No William” coming from my lips if he happened to get his hands too tight around one of the black, plastic bottoms. This could not go on though, because the freshman began to pour in, eager to take the sandwiches, stealing the magic from them that William wanted so dearly. I grabbed him and smiled, trying to take his mind off of the treasure he wasn’t going to have. I asked if he would like to go outside, to which he responded “uh” which I assumed meant yes to the question he assumed I asked of “Would you like a magical magic treasure?” because when I took him out he began to fuss, grabbing backwards for the goodies he was leaving behind.

 His fussing stopped however when we entered the hot Virginia outdoors. His face lit up as I removed him from his stroller and down upon the grass. I watched him run around and play, chasing him, picking him up and tickling him. For the majority of the time we had a blast, and it probably tired him out so much that the following was inevitable. William found a metal plate, shiny and hot. He touched it with his feet and gave a grimace. He stood up and stared at the plate, a look of “You dirty rat” on his furled brow. I began to move closer and said “William, stop, get away” and was right beside him when he decided he would rather run than be picked up by the brute who had earlier denied him his magic sandwiches. He started to run, but stopped as his feet booth came in contact with the plate. His face went from a smile to neutral, and then it slowly became one of “I rather wish I was anywhere but here right now.” I picked him up and went inside with him, much rather having sandwiches on his head, then burns on his feet.

 When we got inside about 2 hours had passed since when we had first arrived, another 2 still looming ahead. We found my girlfriend in the lounge; her groups turn to feast upon the smorgasbord of bread and meat. I, pretending to be an upcoming freshman, went and grabbed some sandwiches for William and myself. His eyes lit up as he finally could eat the treasure he desired, the cookie his mother had just given to him. My girlfriend told me of the people she was with, how she already knew most of the things that were being told to her, and that the people she was going to school with were as immature as the high-schoolers she had left behind. I laughed, glad to be hanging out with William over the company she was keeping. Babies and Freshman have a lot in common, but babies are smarter.

to be continued