This is Why We Don't Make Fun of Big Babies!
They will totally haunt your ass
My friend Ella worked with a woman who birthed the world’s most gigantic baby. He wore pants with zippers by the time he was three months old. This baby was large and not in charge of anything! Babies, am I right?
“I don’t know how this happened,” Ella pondered. “The mom and dad are normal-sized people.”
“I don’t know how she got that thing out of her!” I mused and being a single, liberal arts college educated, 20-something with a strong adversity towards children, it’s possible I really didn’t know.
For years, Ella entertained me with pictures of Enormo (our nickname for him, not his legal name) doing regular baby things like tummy time, pulling on a cat’s tail, or being stuffed into the tiny leg holes of a baby swing like a middle-aged lady’s stomach rolls tucked into a pair of Spanx. Even though Enormo was doing age-appropriate things, he appeared oddly self-aware of how he must look compared to the other babies. His parents were always on the defense, ready to shout, “He’s just big for his age! It’s normal for two-year-olds to wear diapers and use a sippy cup!”
Oh, how we, so smug and self-righteous in our childfree existence, laughed at the antics of Enormo and his prickly parents! It was all fun and mocking-an-innocent-baby games until years later when Ella gave birth to a nearly 12 pound baby boy.
What in the actual DNA hellscape had we conjured?
“The world works in mysterious ways,” my mom used to say. What she meant was, “The universe punished you assholes for making fun of a sweet baby.”
Was it too late to mock the smartly dressed, advanced learners at the local Montessori school? 😬
Ella and her husband were also normal-sized people and yet they managed to create the second coming of a very tall, doughy Michelin baby.
“He’s just so long!” Ella said. “All of his outfits make him look like a shipwrecked pirate!”
Only if that pirate was shipwrecked at an Old Country Buffet! I thought. I just couldn’t help myself!
Indeed it didn’t feel right dressing a child who looked like he could carry his own carseat to and from daycare in a onsie adorned with smiling whales proclaiming to be Daddy’s Little Squirter. Because, umm, kid, it’s time to work on some basic life skills.
Ella, like her former co-worker, was quick to introduce her son as, “big for his age” lest the other parents questioned why a child insisted on playing in the toddler sandbox. She was so paranoid people would think her child-sized infant was just a lazy toddler who made his parents carry him everywhere. He looked like the teacher when his kindergarten class lined up for recess. And she was always ready with a copy of his birth certificate to brandish at Little League games when the opposing team insisted the nearly five-foot-tall 7-year-old taking the mound had to be a teenager.
It wasn’t easy for Ella— the guilt over making fun of Enormo which surely led to some cosmic retribution, constantly having to defend her child’s right to exist among his peers, and worrying some adult assholes were secretly making fun of her kid!
Who would do such a thing? 🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Okay, Universe. We’re good, right?
I was a willing participant in the Enormo discord, but thankfully managed to deliver an “average” sized baby. So I was spared, right?
Wellllllllllllll, yes and no.
Let me tell you a story about Peter Mohegan, my elementary school nemesis and first foil.
Peter crashed onto my judgmental radar in kindergarten. I was next in line for the monkey bars, when that idiot got himself stuck on top the jungle gym.
Bruh…
He threw a giant tantrum that resulted in a 5-adult rescue mission including the principal who decided kindergarteners were too stupid to handle the jungle gym and forbid our use of it.
Being stuck on top of the jungle gym and crying about it until the national guard was called in was all it took to break Peter’s emotional regulation dam. This kid cried over nap time, the crayons in his crayon box, the crayons not in his crayon box, the failed-to-propagate seedlings in his Dixie cup garden. He cried his way all through elementary school, summer camps, and rec sports.
When he didn’t understand a math problem, he cried.
When he stumbled over a word during a read-aloud, he cried.
When he was tagged out in a kickball game, he cried.
When he was tagged out by me in a kickball game, that bitch kicked me in the shins and then cried all the way to principal’s office.
When I opened my math book and saw we were about to learn fractions, I was thrilled! Hell yes, I hated fractions and would fail every test that involved them, but at least I could keep my angst to myself. Everybody knew Peter sucked at pieces and parts and would lose his ever-loving shit! This was going to be so good!
Yes, we were mean little dirtbags. But it was the feral 80’s and we didn’t have phones or vape pens so tantrums and meltdowns were as entertaining as it got.
Peter’s soul and my storytelling skills were nourished by his tears. Every day I would come home and act out his blubbering dramatics for my mother. This kid became part of our family lore. St. Peter, patron of the blubbering theatrics. We laughed about him long after he moved out of state in middle-school and I brought him up even as a full-grown adult woman!
I have yet to see someone cry so damn much.
Until I met my son.
Nowadays kids who are comfortable showing vulnerability, are called “empathetic” or “highly sensitive.” Back in my day, they were known as “crybaby bitches.”
TO BE VERY CLEAR, my sweet child was never as bad as Peter! Peter suuuuuuuuuuucked. My son is the most perfect human to ever human. But it became clear early and often that our child was quick to tears.
If he was pissed off, he cried.
If he was upset, he cried.
If he saw a kid drop an ice cream cone and burst out crying, my son also got upset and burst out crying.
And who can forget how he spent the first nine days of elementary school?
In a way I admired his complete lack of awareness and indifference. The tears came wherever and whenever the mood the struck. No one would make him feel ashamed to cry! Believe me, I tried! (KIDDING. Sort of.) If he felt like crying while also running to second base, so what? T-ball can be a real tearjerker. And who doesn’t want to raise a human who cares about the suffering of others? This kid literally had no idea that crying in your 3rd grade classroom because you missed your dog could label you a total sad sack— for, like, ever.
It was all very matter of fact.
ME: Hi, honey bear! What did you do in school today?
HIM: Played basketball, wrote a story, cried a little.
I’m not going to lie— it was a struggle for me. I looked at my sweet child with the big emotions and saw a bunch of catty fourth graders snickering behind their Judy Blume books because they knew Peter was about to crash out over state capitals. I couldn’t bear the thought of kids making fun of my kid because he wasn’t afraid to show emotion. But I also couldn’t tell him to stop crying in front of people because that’s how we get toxic masculinity!
Instead, I told him some people feel more than others because their hearts live on the outside of their bodies and then he cried AND had nightmares for two weeks because how gross is that???
I tried again.
ME: What I mean is big emotions are a beautiful thing, but also a tough way to live. There’s a lot of feelings zipping around out there. You can’t pick them all up. Take the ones that make you feel good and send the other ones packing.
HIM: So like, brush things off?
ME: Yes, exactly! But also never stop caring about people or feeling your feels or let someone make you feel bad if you get emotional, but maybe just find a more private space to feel those feels? Know your audience? But also be a role model! You know what I mean?
HIM: Nope! Want to watch me play Fortnite?
From Classroom Coward to C-Suite Savant
Now at the cusp of his teen years, my son isn’t nearly as free with the waterworks. And he’s isn’t the only sensitive kid in the bunch. I’ve seen his friends lose their shit over sports or get homesick during a sleepover or dissolve like a pillar of salt in a monsoon over the outcome of a video game. And you know what? They don’t make fun of each other like us punk ass bitches from the 80’s. They don’t call each other names. They pat each other on the back, say it’s going to be okay, and go back to hitting each other with sticks. When did kids become so evolved?
Ella’s son went from being a giant baby to a giant toddler to a giant kid to now a very tall teenager whose size has served him well athletically and socially.
And crybaby-chicken-pants Peter is doing just fine too. A quick online search revealed he’s married, has two sons, and is a big-wig finance exec for a major beverage company. Maybe those over-the-top tantrums have propelled him up the corporate ladder. When you are an adult with big feelings, it’s called emotional intelligence.
This is why we don’t make fun of big babies. We need them. They soften the edges. And they can really liven up a boring algebra lesson.
XO,
Shelly
Want to Hear a Funny Story?
How about 2 of them? People, when I say Funny Story days are the best days I mean it. You can’t believe the bananas shit
and I are mining from the bowels of the internet! A teacher with a strange, stank vendetta? The world’s worst human and her heavily diseased husk? Check out episode 8 here:
When I was in my late-twenties (and still more than a decade away from having a child of my own), my friends had a baby that was a serious megachonker. Round face, lots of chins, those arm folds that look like rolled-up towels. My friends were/are German, and they began referring to the baby as "Der Bürgermeister" (the mayor) because when he was all dressed up in his warm clothes and his hat, he looked like an old-school German mayor. Round and serious. Kind of a Winston Churchill vibe.
Anyway, Der Bürgermeister is now in his late teens and is tall and thin, so it all worked out.
This was hilarious--thank you. I laughed out loud.
One of my high school friends used to make fun of our guidance counselor's chin hairs, and I'm pretty sure she's the reason why tweezers are everywhere now.