Use Your Head

I sometimes miss having young children, but lucky for me, my friend EL has them. I can enjoy all her charming little stories about her kids and sniff their little heads, and then I can go home to my teenage daughters and I can sleep. I can sleep through the night, and if I want to, on the weekends at least, I can sleep late, because chances are pretty good, if we don’t have anywhere to be, they too will be sleeping late. EL, on the other hand, hasn’t slept more than an interrupted five hour stretch in over four years. As a great philosopher once said, it sucks to be her.

Her baby, just shy of a year and a half, is at the parrot stage, where everyone, including me, wants to see what you can make him do or say. He’s not much of a talker, as most second borns aren’t, but he does enjoy a bit of physical modeling. This is a kid who started pulling up before he was supposed to sit up and was cruising before he was supposed to stand. He is not very interested in what he is supposed to do.  Don’t forget what that philosopher said (see above paragraph.)

Anyway, most people, including me, think this baby of EL’s is just about the cutest thing since kittehs and baby goats took over the Internet. Getting him to react to you is like icing on the cake. One of her neighbors, a teenage boy who likes little kids more than the average teenage boy but not in a dangerous or creepy way, has been teaching  the little cute bugger how to fist bump.

Fist bumping is becoming more than just a hip way to greet your buddies; it is also, according to both Howie Mandel and the CDC, an excellent way to reduce the sharing of hand germs. Along with sneezing into one’s elbow and wearing a mask in public like the late great Michael Jackson, fist bumping is hygienic and fashionable, and obviously a skill a little germ carrier like a baby should master.

EL’s baby thinks his fists are not for bumping, though. He thinks they are for shoving in his mouth, in an effort to ease his sore gums and to gag himself. If you offer him your fist, you won’t get a fist bump; you will get what he prefers to give in response, his head. Much like a cat, EL’s baby likes to put his head against things that he loves.  Wait; make that more like a ram. He doesn’t sweetly rub his head against you, he goes for the kill. He recently put his head against EL’s orbital socket, leaving her with a black eye significant enough to make the average kindly stranger want to offer her a safe haven.

I remember those head butting days. My own sweet babies were fond of giving head butts, most often when you bent down to pick them up, so they could get a good smack to the bottom of your chin, enough to make you bite off a piece of your tongue or crack a tooth. We referred to it as “soccer hooliganing,” and I am pretty sure either my husband or I had a bloody nose from a baby head butt. For skulls with soft spots, they sure pack a wallop.

So back to EL’s baby and the fist bumping and the head butting. Her neighbor’s son was trying to teach him how to fist bump by putting out his own fist and saying “Gimme knuckles.” The baby’s response would be to whack his head against the boy’s fist. Hilarity would ensue, mostly because it doesn’t hurt to get a head butt on your fist bump. This little demonstration happened repeatedly, just long enough for EL to down a glass of wine and wish her neighbors weren’t so friendly.

After about fifteen minutes of fist bump training, the boy’s mother, EL’s neighbor, showed up to collect her son. “Watch this,” he told his mom, and put out his fist. “Gimme knuckles.”  And the baby head butted him.

The mother laughed and wanted to try as well. “Gimme knuckles,” she said. Head butt to the fist. “Gimme knuckles,” she repeated. Again with the head butt.

“Oh, he is just so cute!” she said. “He just keeps hitting me with his head. Gimme head, come on, give me head. Gimme head!”

EL was, rightly so, appalled. Her neighbor, a good Catholic woman, was telling her child, her baby boy, to give her head, over and over, and had no idea what she was saying. EL wasn’t about to tell her what she was saying, and instead stood there, unable to make it stop.

The appropriate response to such a request of a child, if you think about it, is a good bump of the fist. Or in this case, let him give her head. She would probably end up with a skull sized shiner.