The Manny Tapes

I always thought if I ever had a kid or was involved in the day to day rearing of one I'd be one of those guys that remembers every stage perfectly: you did this at 3 months, you looked like that at 6 months, you lent me $10 at 7 months blah blah blah.  But it turns out I'm the opposite: I can't remember what the kid did or looked like yesterday, much less 6 months ago. I look at him now and it's like well, that's how he's always looked and always will. Bam, right there. There he is.  I remember the last meal I gave him and I know what the next thing I'll feed him is, but that's it. His mother will come home and ask what he ate earlier in the day, and my brain freezes. "What the fuck...did he have....rosemary flan with tempered pomegranite drizzle...?"  Same thing with any activities we do; I know we've gone around the city on a couple of adventures just this week, but I have no idea what they were. I'm sitting here scratching my head "what the fuck...where'd we go on Monday...I have no idea...which day was my dance recital?" Is this normal? I usually have good recall re: shit I do on a daily to yearly basis. Maybe it's a survival thing, you're hyper-focused on the kid's present state and that's it? Or am I just a fucking idiot?

The kid's amnesia is at least a lot funnier. Typical case is today. He's in his plastic chair with tray combo chowing away at lunch when all of a sudden, fuck that!  Blows up into a rage, smacking the chair, howling. Has to get the fuck outta the chair, and now. I pull him out and he gives the chair a look that tells me he expects me to throw it off the roof while afire, never to be heard from again. Dude looks like he's possessed; I half expect a priest to walk through all of a sudden "get rid of that chair!" And maybe stop for a make out session (say, why don't they make the whole plane outta the stuff they make the black box with?) So I start to take him over to the living room to play and goof around when I'm like shit, I gotta take care of something real quick in the kitchen. And I don't wanna leave him alone in the living room for that long, so I step back into the kitchen. What am I gonna do with him? Obviously he now hates the chair forever and will never sit in it again. I'm looking around; I guess I could just let him on the floor, but of course that's covered with the 40 pounds of food he tossed while "eating" a minute before. I'm standing there thinking when GUESS WHO all of a sudden is like "heeeeeeeeyy, look! a shiny, plastic chair!  that I can sit in! this is great!!" and practically hurls himself outta my arms and into the chair, where he has the time of his life for the next twenty minutes. This, mind you, about thirty seconds after he was acting as if the chair had popped him in one of his nuts. Go figure.















"Hey Xmas, guess what I DIDN'T forget? That's right,
get the baby wipes you stupid fuck!!  hahahahahaaha!!!!

The Manny Tapes

When a kid turns one year old, his job description changes from "lovingly accept food with wide-eyed gratitude and love" to "throw as much food around as possible." So for a while now the boy spends most of our meal breaks tossing the shit everywhere. And nowadays he barely bothers to even notcie what the fuck he's throwing: "...peas pasta grapes check check check, let's keep this shit moving....(toss toss toss)" And now this morning he's learned hey, he doesn't hafta blindly just toss the shit around, he can throw the food AT someone!!

I have a college degree. I served my country. And now I'm standing here as blocks of cheese bounce off my forehead and pieces of canteloupe stick to my clothes. The boy is howling with laughter cause a grape just hit my eye. Dignity 1, Manny 0.








"Hahahahaaha!! I can't miss, you pathetic fat fuck!!!"

The Manny Tapes

Another funny thing about babies you realize is here we are, the human race. Have dominated the planet like no other species in it's history, are at the absolute top of the food chain. We have no natural predators. We are, to be sure, the tits. But is there a species wherein a newborn is more helpless? A gnat has a kid and BOOM! baby gnat's flyin round looking for food. You lay a human newborn down on the ground and it just lays there til it dies, completely helpless. At no point does it think to itself "I don't think anyone's coming, I better figger out a way to get my own cable hooked up...."  Just lays there. Literally cannot do anything to ensure it's own survival. But when it grows up, it can potentially rule the Earth. Ain't that sumpin.






"Hahaha!!  I've fallen and Xmastime gets paid $8 a day to get me up, that fucking loser douchebag!!!"

The Manny Tapes

One funny thing about watching a baby crawl around on the floor is when they trip. Which, even as I'm watching it occur, I have no idea how this happens. On all fours motoring around; next thing you know, face down in the carpet. Yes, I could riff on that sentence for about another paragraph, but I'd like to keep a post clean, for once. Like trying to figure out who's buying all these Nickelback albums, the crawling trip remains a mystery. And while I'm not a tuff-guy Manny - usually any sign of upcoming crying and I'm Sir Hugs-a-lot - when he "trips" while crawling and looks up at me, firing up the waterworks, I'm like oh HELL no, I can't get on board with soothing you for this. Almost as bad as when my Grandma broke her hip while sitting in a chair. Man. Baffling.






"Hahahaha!!  Xmas, you WISH you could munch some rug, you fucking faggot!!!"

The Manny Tapes

Yesterday while wheeling the boy around in his stroller we rolled up beside an old man being pushed in a wheelchair. I saw his little head wheel to the right to stare at the old man for a few seconds, then I could read the kid’s look of relief perfectly: “oh, thank God...I thought I was gonna hafta learn how to walk! This is AWESOME!!!”









"HAHAHA!!  Keep pushing, you fucking douchebag!!"