It used to be, no matter how tough living might get for adults, babies still had it pretty good. Their daily schedules were fairly simple, involving little more than sleeping, eating and playing.
But, alas, it’s getting to be a rough world out there for them too. Before even their first year of living is up, they’re out on the fall-fair circuit and in the malls, entered in gruelling baby contests, competing with their fellow rug bugs for the baby limelight. Gone are the carefree days, even for them. Their first encounter with groups of other babies is likely to come, not in a playpen surrounded by toys, but racing down the length of a gymnast’s mat surrounded by other clawing, crawling, babbling innocents while scores of howling adults stand huddled around the racing area, yelling and screaming encouragement to their tiny relatives.
And all this activity is captured on hours of videotape to be played back in living colour for the amusement of relatives, friends and total strangers for the next 30 years of the kids’ lives.
Harmless as they may seem, these contests are sending a not-so-subtle message to the next generation: Winners are more valued than losers. It isn’t as if they wouldn’t soon learn that lesson anyway, but the importance of winning didn’t used to start dawning on them till they started taking exams in school.
Now, at 10 months of age, some of them have already experienced the thrill of victory as they hear the cheers go up at the announcement that they won. Many more of them have sensed their parents’ disappointment at having a second-class baby who couldn’t make it into the top three.
I recently attended such a baby contest and soon found myself down on my knees just beyond the finish line waving a stuffed miniature mouse doll in the air and loudly beckoning to a young relative entered in a diaper derby. A half dozen other eager tykes were also taking part in the contest to see who could crawl the length of a mat the fastest but I was taken back to see that one out of the whole number was actually able to walk. Though she must have been of eligible age, it seemed strange to me that crawling babies could be expected to have a chance against a walking one.
Despite that advantage, my little relation shot out of the gate like a cannonball and headed straight down the mat for his mother at the other end who was enticing him with loud, motherly type chants and a breadstick. It looked like it was all over but the acceptance speeches when the lone walker among the bunch suddenly lunged down the track, stepped on my relative’s head and crossed the finish line with a flourish.
From that humiliation, my family marched on to another tent where babies were being judged for their beauty and brains. So many were entered, they had to run them off in heats. After a half hour’s wait in a hot sun, my relative sat at the front of the stage on his proud mother’s knee and went into a stupefied trance as an overenthusiastic emcee shoved a microphone in his mouth and started asking him questions about the distance of the sun from the earth, the average weight of the mature Arctic polar bear and other such simple things. These of a kid who so far, can say “dad” when his father’s around and “twee” when he sees leafy branches waving outside his bedroom window.
As expected, some smirking Cary Grant of a toddler who’d come prepared for the event, recited a few lines of Shakespeare, stood on his head and played Greensleeves on the viola before accepting his first prize victory. My relative finished out of the running.
What’s next? Babies on steroids? Babies with managers? Baby olympics? Betting on babies?
Obviously, it’s time for an inquiry.
©1989 Jim Hagarty
