Candy From a Baby

It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby: Just repeat it to yourself and listen to what you’re saying.

Really? That easy? So…that makes it…OK?

The first time I heard it -- this idea that taking candy from a baby (such as myself) was somehow easy or simple, or perhaps without consequence -- I was horrified. It was so mean-spirited, so cruel. But then – well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m about ten months old now, and most afternoons the au pair takes me to the park and gives me a lollipop to keep me quiet while she gabs on her phone. If Mommy knew the au pair was giving me a lollipop she’d go batshit (which I’m not allowed to say for reasons I don’t get), but she doesn’t – she just gives me to the au pair in the morning and disappears. “Mommy’s going to go make law,” she says, and then I don’t see her until she comes home with cartons of take-out at suppertime.

I like lollipops, except the red ones, which taste like Tylenol. But one day, I’m in the stroller and these two older boys, seven or eight years old I’d guess, come over and give me a little of the koochie-koo thing under my neck, and while the au pair is on the phone and not watching, one of them suddenly lunges and grabs my lollipop! The two of them take off, laughing and shouting, taking turns licking it, and one of them says to the other, “See? I told you it was easy! As easy as taking candy from a baby!”

What? Taking candy from a baby, really? Is that a thing? Is it supposed to be OK because it’s easy? Why not just put a sign on my back that says, “take candy away from this little bitch, no problem.” So, I was sitting there, confused and a little devastated, when suddenly another kid stoops down next to me, and before I can flinch, he says “Hey! I feel you, brother.”

The kid is about the same age as those other boys, but he seems much nicer and he’s got this flaming red hair. “I know what you’re going through,” he says. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘beaten like a red-headed step-child?’”

Well, no I hadn’t, but I was appalled! Was it really OK to beat red-headed step-kids, like it was OK to steal candy from babies? I wanted to ask, but I can’t talk yet. Still, the red-headed kid seemed to understand what I was thinking and whispered to me, “Your au pair is gabbing on the phone. Come with me, she won’t notice,” and before I knew it, he was wheeling me away.

In a very short while the red-headed kid had wheeled me away to some kind of a small shed – a clubhouse really – with a bunch of folks inside. “Hey people, here’s the candy baby,” he announced, and there were smiles and warm welcomes for me from everyone there – it seemed they had expected me!

“We’re delighted to ha’ you with us, li’l’ fella,” said a fellow in a pea coat and a little white hat, whose speech was slurred like Daddy’s is when he has too much “booze.”

“Candy Baby, allow me to introduce the drunken sailor,” the red-headed kid said.

“An’ I can ma’age my money jus’ fine!” the sailor exclaimed, then shook his head to clear it.

“Where am I?” he said, then burped loudly. “Drinks are on me!”

“Pardon our friend,” said a fellow with a broad smile whom Fate had deprived of one of his arms and was holding a pot of glue with the other. He wore a painter’s hat and had a large brush tucked into his apron.

“And this is the one-armed paperhanger,” the red-headed kid said by way of introduction. “How’s it going, Mel?”

“Not too busy,” the one-armed paperhanger said with a pleasant smile. “Have you met Clarence yet?”

I looked around to see who “Clarence” might be, when I noticed the head of a fish poking out of a barrel. “I’m Clarence,” said the fish.

“He’s the fish in a barrel,” the red-headed kid said, although he was sort of grown-up-splaining, if you ask me.

“And I feel for you, kid,” the fish in the barrel said, “but frankly, if I had some candy, I’d give it to whomever wanted it if they would just stop shooting at me.”

The fish had a troubled expression you don’t see often in a fish. “Before they put me in this barrel, I was the fish out of water. Man, that was a drag! You know, a person’s uncomfortable somewhere and they say they’re a ‘fish out of water.’ And it’s supposed to be like oh! that explains it -- it’s OK that they’re uncomfortable, because there’s an explanation, so you don’t have to do anything about it. No one ever asks how they got out of water, or how to get them back into the water. Now, in my case, one day some guy came along, picked me up, and splash, he throws me into a barrel. Sweet relief!, I thought, finally! But then, bang bang bang, and it struck me -- as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

“My first concern was for my safety, of course, but then I realized-- how stupid is this? First, shooting a fish in a barrel isn’t that easy, unless you’re short-rodding with a Winchester, but otherwise, the fish swims around in the barrel, and if it’s the standard 42 gallon barrel, and if it’s not a very big fish, like a spot or a crappie or a bluegill, then it might be harder than…well, harder than stealing candy from a baby,” he said, nodding to me sympathetically. “And not only is shooting fish in a barrel not that easy, but it ruins the barrel, shoots the damn thing full of holes. I suppose the people who were shooting fish in a barrel saw the light and started taking candy from babies instead.”

The assemblage nodded in agreement and a woman stepped forward to introduce herself. She wore a long, tattered black dress with black shoes, her hair was an unkempt mess of black and gray, and she was decidedly unattractive, with a green tint to her complexion, and a variety of wart-like growths on her face. “So, dearie, do you think I’m ugly?” she asked me.

What a question! I was glad I don’t know how to talk! Luckily, the red-headed step-child interrupted. “Come on, now, Heloise,” he said. “He’s a baby! How’s he supposed to answer a question like that?”

The witch took the correction in stride. “Well, that’s what they all say – someone’s ugly as a witch, as if Joan of Arc of some of those Salem girls weren’t hotties!”

“Yeah, but they weren’t really witches, were they?” Mel, the one-armed paperhanger noted.

He had a point, but it didn’t slow the witch down. “Well…no matter. Because no sooner did they start in talking about how witches were ugly, it got worse -- cold as a witch’s tit! Frankly, when did my tits become a topic for public discussion, a point of thermal reference for the masses? And frankly, how do you know? It’s not like anybody’s checked my mammaries, or is ever going to, unless they want to go through life sitting on a lily pad and eating flies! Besides, every creature with breasts in all of Creation is a mammal, and they’re all warm-blooded, so you have to wonder where the idiots who say this stuff were during high school biology! Next thing you know they’ll be denying evolution.”

“Thank you, Heloise,” the red-headed step-child said as the witch sat down. “I now want turn to Oswald, who has a brief presentation I asked him to prepare.”

An ox waddled into the center of the room and spoke. “I appreciate our red-headed friend asking me to do this research,” the ox said. “Partly, of course, because of the dumb as an ox business, which every ox – and every farmer -- knows is simply used to justify putting a yoke on us and making us drag heavy stuff through paddies. It’s the same old stuff cruel people always fall back on – blame the victim. I’d like to see them try that on a carnivore,” the ox snorted contemptuously, then put on a pair of reading glasses and extracted some notes.

“There’s this thing on the Internet called Google N-grams – they tell you how often words are used in English-language published works. So, for example, it will tell you how often the words ‘taking candy from a baby’ appear,” he said, looking at me quite pointedly. “And by 2011, the expression ‘taking candy from a baby’ had become four times more frequent in written English than it had been in 1985, just a quarter of a century before. The same for ‘fish in a barrel,’ too, four times more frequent,” the ox said, shaking his massive head as he took off his glasses and put his papers down.

“There is a societal outbreak around us, an outbreak of meanness, of cruelty, of callousness." thje ox said. "And it victimizes all of us – not just the candy-less babies, the fish in barrels, the red-headed step-children, but the people who reduce themselves by using these expressions, as if they have no faults of their own. People don’t respect other people any longer – they just laugh at their fellow creatures as they try to feel better about themselves. It’s part and parcel of a more unequal, devil-take-the-hindmost society. We treat things – wealth, investments, possessions – better than a beating heart.” The ox stopped and ran his foreleg and hoof under a sniffly nose – he was close to tears. The red-headed step-child consoled him with a gentle pat on his hump, but the ox was upset. “Where does it stop?” the ox cried unhappily. “When do we start treating each other with dignity and respect?”

There was a round of silent nodding in response to the ox’s plaintive complaint, when the red-headed step-child told me he needed to get me back before I was missed, so we made our apologies and he rolled me back to where the au pair was sitting, still gabbing on her phone. He whispered to me he’d be checking up on me and not to worry, and just like that, he disappeared.

I felt happy I’d made some friends, but more importantly, now I knew when other people were mean, the target of their malice – whether me, or the witch, or the ox, or the paperhanger – didn’t merit the callousness with which they were treated. It was a liberating revelation. But at the same time, I was unhappy folks like the step-child or the witch or the fish had to go through life that way. I wouldn’t be a baby for very long. But they would be as they were forever.

As I thought about it, sitting in my stroller, I guess I started making that face babies make. You know the one I mean – our eyes open up wide and get moist but no tears run, our nostrils flare wider than you thought they could, our lips turn from pink to purple and start to quiver, and we generally look like it’s about to be a bad day in Pompeii. Suddenly the au pair notices me and gets all attentive. “Look at you!” she says. “Is something wrong? Would you like some milk?” And she takes out a sippy cup filled with milk and hands it to me. I regarded it for a moment and then an inspiration hit me, and I threw it down on the ground.

“Now look what you’ve done!” the au pair said exasperatedly.

I looked down at the spilled milk and was about to cry over it, when I had a change of heart. Don’t cry over the spilled milk, I told myself! Don’t play into their hands! Don’t give them the satisfaction!

So I proceeded, instead, to take the loudest, smelliest, messiest poop I had ever taken. “Oh, Jesus!” the au pair shouted, and put away her phone to start wheeling me home for a diaper change. “I can’t believe the mess you’ve made!” she bleated.

I smiled discreetly as she did. If you want to change the world, you start with the weapons you have.

Plaanning This Season's Garden

With Earth Day upon us and Spring in the air, it’s time to plant this year’s garden. Gardening gained many new adherents last year as a COVID-appropriate activity. But gardening rookies and regulars alike are often unaware of the key nutrients gardens deliver, and therefore fail to take them into account when planning their annual planting. Here are some for your review. Happy Earth Day, and happy gardening!

VITAMIN S

Bountiful bowls of crisp, leafy salad greens deliver key nutrients, among them Vitamin C, vitamin K, and beta carotene. But they also help the body to produce its own, often-overlooked, Vitamin S, commonly referred to as Sanctimony.

Societal levels of Vitamin S have historically been stable and modest, but in the past four years a virtual explosion of Vitamin S has been observed throughout the general population. Outbreaks were first noted in the first week of November, 2016, in places such as San Francisco, Boston, Brooklyn, Portland, and other progressive urban centers, leading nutritionists to wonder whether Vitamin S could be obtained in such foods as brie, sea bass, kale, quinoa, kombucha, and soy-based meat substitutes. But in recent years, Vitamin S levels in the general public have burgeoned far beyond those initial readings.

Unfortunately, nutritionists warn that, like cholesterol, Vitamin S can come in both “good” and “bad” forms. “Good” Vitamin S comes from the satisfaction derived from activities with ethical or other normative worth -- gardening ranks high among these sources. And while these activities are often characterized as “their own reward,” some accretion of Vitamin S is inevitable when participating not just in gardening, but also such activities as feeding the hungry, providing water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, tending to the sick, and visiting the imprisoned, an observation first made by a Roman-era practitioner named Matthew (although Eastern practitioners in the Buddhist tradition often stand-by the “own reward” diagnosis and see Vitamin S accrual as a serious problem). Moreover, a surge in “bad” Vitamin S has recently occurred alongside rising levels of social media use and the ensuing higher levels of disinformation, and preliminary evidence suggests “bad” Vitamin S levels can be found, alongside with the COVID virus, in non-mask-wearers around the country.

“Vitamin S is a little like chocolate -- both are guilty pleasures in moderation, but both become destructive as a way of life,” said Abner Lint, a USDA nutritionist. To demonstrate his point, Lint points to the Vitamin S superspreader event at the U.S. Capitol this January, where many rioters appeared to have overdosed on Vitamin S and as a result lapsed into borderline-psychotic episodes. The result has been a subsequent calamitous rise of “bad” Vitamin S in the general population. “If the ‘good’ Vitamin S obtained from activities such as gardening supplanted the ‘bad’ Vitamin S found on social media,” nutritionist Lint notes, “we’d all be a lot healthier.”

VITAMIN P

Vitamin P, widely available as Patience, is an essential nutrient that can be obtained from the home garden. Gardeners who see the fuzzy nubs of cucumbers emerging from their yellow blossoms or the green underbellies of unripe tomatoes on the vine obtain hard-to-synthesize Vitamin P in ample quantities as these vegetables ripen in the garden, although recipes such as fried green tomatoes or sauteed baby carrots, which incorporate garden produce before it is fully ripe, convey no Vitamin P benefit whatsoever to those who consume them. Conversely, there are isolated instances of Vitamin P overdose in the garden. Lettuces, spinaches, herbs, and other crops that will “go to seed” in situations in which there is too much Vitamin P, and too little Vitamin W (see below), applied. A good example is okra, which must be harvested while new, lest it grow to lengths at which its only productive use is as barbed wire for penal systems in totalitarian societies.

Vitamin P is widely unappreciated in popular health discussions, but its benefits make it an essential component of any diet. “We know that people with higher levels of Vitamin P have lower blood pressure, enjoy sexual activity more pronouncedly, have greater longevity, and clearer skin,” said one garden nutritionist. “It’s not surprising Vitamin P is universally recognized as a virtue.”

Scientists, however, note an unanticipated incongruity in the distribution of Vitamin P among the general population. Despite their shorter remaining life expectancies, the elderly as a group demonstrate higher levels of Vitamin P than do the young, who should have far longer time horizons. “Youth may be served,” says physiologist Howie Doux, “but youth appears to demand to be served right now.” Scientists now believe aging improves the body’s ability to produce and store Vitamin P. Some gardening enthusiasts, therefore, encourage sharing the pursuit with children early in life, in order to avoid Vitamin P deficiencies that often plague the teenage and young adult years.

VITAMIN W

Vitamin W, commonly known by its street name, Work, is closely associated with gardening and garden-grown produce. A row of productive, disease-free, mulched, pruned, and staked tomato plants are a clear indication large amounts of Vitamin W have been absorbed by the gardener.

Nutritionists note that Vitamin W is prevalent throughout the population – like Vitamin D conveyed by sunshine, most people must all but consciously avoid it in order to fail to get an adequate dose. But the age distribution of Vitamin W levels is often skewed. Young people often avoid Vitamin W-creating opportunities, preferring indoor activities, such as gaming or collecting NFTs, which lead to chronic Vitamin W deficiency, and muscular atrophy and ossification of key neurons needed in later life. Scientists point to previous cohorts of young people who obtained both Vitamin D and Vitamin W through Little league Baseball, lawn mowing, dog walking, such employments as warehouse-sweeping, snow shoveling, stockroom and shelf cleaning, and delivering kosher meat on bicycles, or, less frequently, running away from home. These activities are less prevalent in today’s population of young people, and many of their preferred pastimes such as Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto CCLXIV, and Super Mario Brothers are often thought to convey “false” Vitamin W that delivers none of its long-term benefits, so-called “empty ergs.”

Conversely, the elderly appear to have a declining tolerance for Vitamin W. Large doses of it among seniors sometimes produce symptoms such as backache, dizziness, corns and callouses, and whining. Others among the elderly appear to be Vitamin W-dependent, unable to stop building their Vitamin W levels even after a lifetime of accumulation. On the other hand, most of the elderly have built up adequate reserves of Vitamin W through their lifetimes and are perfectly pleased to stop their exposure to it.

Finally, economists note that some people are never exposed to Vitamin W in any form. These people are sometimes referred to as “coupon clippers,” “passive investors,” “rentiers,” and “the idle rich.” Nutritionists point to the absence of Vitamin W among these groups as the source of their skewed social outlook and their fundamental dissociation from reality, including such beliefs that the poor are lazy, regulation is kneecapping society, and All Lives Matter. Such well-known personalities as Betsy DuVos and Wilbur Ross are thought to have be stricken with these maladies – it is believed to have killed Sheldon Adelson. “If you know someone like that,” says physician Carol Salt, “the best thing you can do for them is to give them a hoe and a shovel and point them to some dirt. They might complain, but you’d be saving a life.”

VITAMIN M

Many would-be gardeners confuse the relationship between gardening vegetables and the provision of Vitamin M, money. Besotted would-be gardeners walk the produce aisles at their supermarkets in February and see waxy, gas-ripened tomatoes and scrawny summer squashes selling for three or four dollars a pound, and dream of growing bell peppers come July bigger than their fists and eggplants the size of rabbits. They proceed to plant in anticipation of large doses of Vitamin M, but when it is time to harvest, they see fruits and vegetables at their local farmers markets that put their own to shame at prices that do not justify their efforts.

That is not to say gardening provides no Vitamin M to the gardener. Under the right conditions – for example, wartime “victory” gardens or the plots managed by private citizens in Soviet-style command-and-control economies – gardens can produce Vitamin M in copious amounts. But for the average gardener, significant amounts of Vitamin M must be expended before any return is realized. In this regard, Vitamin M and Vitamin W have a complex interaction. Moreover, many aspects of the annual gardening cycle require significant expenditures of Vitamin M, from tools and implements to seed and fertilizer to liniment and braces for backs, knees, wrists, and hands. The average person is more likely to realize higher Vitamin M levels on the job than in the garden.

VITAMIN H

The most fundamental, but also most controversial and often elusive, nutrient obtained from the garden is Vitamin H, Happiness. Its fundamental character is widely understood, but long-standing problems plague identifying how the body obtains and processes it. One view is gardeners find satisfaction and fulfillment when tending a successful garden, over and above their accretion of Vitamins S, P, and W. (The relationship between Vitamins H and M, on the other hand, is even more contentious, although most agree that Vitamin M cannot secure Vitamin H, but at the same time, it doesn’t hurt.)

A contrasting view is that the body’s levels of Vitamin H are entirely endogenous, that with the proper training and perspective, the body can produce its own, perhaps unlimited, endowments of Vitamin H, a condition known to practitioners as “mellow.” In fact, one school of thought maintains that people with a predisposition to higher levels of Vitamin H are more prone to choose to garden, and the correlation between the two reflects selection bias in the data. Perhaps the best test is for the individual to note their Vitamin H before and after a few hours of planting, weeding, composting, and other activities that lead to the foremost clinical symptom of Vitamin H obtained from the garden - dirty hands.

Name That Beast!

Genesis, Chapter 2, v. 19-20, The Old Testament

And God said, “Let us make Man in our own image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds in the heavens, and the cattle and every crawling thing that crawls upon the earth…And the Lord God formed out of the Earth every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens, and he brought each to the Man to see what he would call it, and whatever the Man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the heavens and to all the beasts of the field.”

From the Book of Horus and Andromedea, Testament of the Divine Dolphin

And the Divine Dolphin said, “Let us make Dolphins in my own image, and let them have dominion over the mackerel, squid, and jellyfish so they may eat them, and let them frolic and dance adorably on the surface of the waters and utter clicks, whistles, shrieks, and rattles. And God formed out of the Earth every fish and every crustacean and every invertebrate and every ocean-dwelling mammal, and He brought each one to Horus and Andromeda, the First Dolphins, and whatever clicks or whistles or shrieks or rattles they called them became their name. And so the First Dolphins gave names to all the fish and all the crustaceans and all the invertebrates and all the aquatic mammals, but the names were just a bunch of clicks and whistles and shrieks and rattles and no one else could understand them and did not care. And as for the land-dwelling creatures, they all left the First Dolphins alone, except for the hairless bipeds who made strange vocalizations but could not click, whistles, shriek, or rattle, so they called him “the thing with cameras.”

From the Bow Dow Dao, Book of Dog

And the Old Dog said, “Let us make Dogs in our own image, and let them have dominion over the backyards and the dog parks. And the Old Dog gave every beast of the field a scent and brought each to Rex, the First Dog, who smelled their assholes and however each living creature smelled, that was its scent. And so the cats were called “Vicious Temperament Poop in Boxes,” and the mice were called “Little Stinkies Who Hide in Walls,” and the hairless bipeds who filled their Dog bowls were called “Good Smelly Parts in the Middle.” But no matter how the beasts of the field smelled, they did not smell as good as the dogs’ own feces and urine, and so they called the feces “Recycling” and they called their urine “The Message Board.” And Rex, the First Dog, barked loudly at all the fowl of the heavens and the beasts of the field until he finally peed and the Old Dog told him “Good boy!” and chucked him behind the ear and let him inside.

From movie, Godzilla: The Secret Origins

And the Lord God looked upon the Earth and said, let there be a hundred-foot lizard-like monster, and let him be called Godzilla, for I am God and "zilla" sounds kind of cool. And the Lord breathed the Breath of Life into Godzilla but he overdid it and endowed Godzilla with blue-ish nuclear breath, which proved to be a problem when he showed every beast of the field and bird of the air and fish of the sea to Godzilla, for instead of naming them, he incinerated them with his nuclear breath. And the Lord created furless bipeds and the furless bipeds built cities and Godzilla walked among the cities and destroyed them along with tens of thousands with his breath and his tail, and so Godzilla came to represent the horrors of nuclear war, and urban renewal. And the Lord said, “I might have screwed up on this one, even worse than stinkbugs,”

From the Testimony of the Divine Cockroach

And the Divine Cockroach said, “Let me make a cockroach in my own image, and let him be named Lester, and the Divine Cockroach brought unto Lester the dinosaurs who lived in the swamps and the inland lakes and the primordial bogs, and asked Lester to name them, which he probably did, but how would we know? For then a great meteor crashed into someplace in Mexico, and annihilated the dinosaurs who dwelled in the swamps, lakes, and bogs, but Lester and the cockroaches survived. And when new birds of the air and fish of the sea and cattle and things that crawl upon the earth arrived, the Divine Cockroach showed Lester all the new animals to see what he would call them, but Lester could not care less and told the Divine Cockroach, “Call them what they wilst, for I shall plague them forevermore regardless.” So, the Divine Cockroach put Lester and the cockroaches in the walls of apartment buildings and in drains and pipes in your basement and in cartons you never unpacked in the attic and gave him dominion over them. And the Divine Cockroach made unto Lester and his offspring a Sacred Covenant, promising that much as the dinosaurs were killed millions of years ago but the cockroaches survived, when the birds and fish and cattle and beast and furless bipeds that walk upon the Earth die out as the dinosaurs did, which shouldn’t take long at this rate, he will find for the cockroaches new beasts to torment and new places to dwell. And the cockroaches said, “That’s cool, but the dinosaurs did get to become birds.”

From Arbor Benedictus, the Holy Book of Trees

And the Lord said, “Let us make Trees in our own image, tall and green and leafy after My likeness, and let them have dominion over all the land. And the Lord created the birds of the air to dwell within the trees and the bees of the hive to help the trees bear fruit and the cattle and every crawling thing upon the Earth so they would consume the fruit and seed of the trees and carry those to the four corners of the earth in their bowels. And the Lord God took every bird and beast and showed them to the First Tree to see what the First Tree would call them, but the First Tree had no idea what the Lord was talking about and did not give the birds and beasts a name, although it did give itself a name, which was “Groot.” The First Tree instead spoke to the other trees in a language of root fungi and low-voltage electric signals and pheromone releases neither the birds nor the beasts nor the Lord, actually, understood, until he saw the movie Avatar. And so the Trees flourished and became numerous until the beast the Lord called Man invented newspapers and furniture and soy beans and fossil fuels, and that was about it for the trees, period, full stop.

From Propogenesis, Holy Scripture of Viruses

And the First Virus said, “Let us take strands of protein, made in our own image, and let them attach themselves to the fish of the sea and the birds in the heavens and the furless bipeds and everything else that crawls upon the earth, and let them commandeer their DNA and dwell therein so that the Viruses shall live. And the First Virus was formed out of the beasts, birds, and fish, and the pig was next to the duck who was next to the bat, and the virus jumped from one to the other and attached itself to all the beasts and all the fowl and became contagious, and delivered songs of praise to the First Virus while the animals it infected died. And when the Virus infected an animal it asked “What is this thing?,” but since the Virus could not see or smell or speak, it gave names to the creatures it infected according to their circumstances, including “Immunologically Deficient,” “Compromised Resistance,” "Drinks Bleach," and “Likes Yummy Bat.” And then the virus came to America but not everybody cared so the virus went to the motorcycle rallies and the Supreme Court nomination ceremonies and the Superbowl celebrations and some of the beasts called the virus “Chinese Flu” but the virus did not pay attention because it did not speak English, although even if it understood what it was being called it would have been offended, because even a simple strand of protein knows racism when it hears it.