By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG. 3, 2018 | Ever think of yourself as a baby, and what you looked like?
After thinking about this for years, I have concluded that I must have been at least a goofy, if not ugly, baby. That’s hard for me to admit, but I have some evidence to support that idea.
Here’s why.
Some of my earliest recollections as a young child were people oogling over me. There were always a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins and other more distant family members, or even non-related adults, around. And they said to my mother over and over the same thing one after the other that I recall when I was maybe two or three years old. This is about as far back as I can remember, and the words were always similar.
“Oh, doesn’t he have the most beautiful brown eyes.”
All I remember of people inspecting me was “brown eyes, brown eyes, brown eyes.”
So from the beginning, naturally I was somewhat proud of my brown eyes. Looking at them today, they don’t seem all that distinctive, though they remain brown.
But I think there was something more going on.
Perhaps they were trying to go easy on my parents. These baby inspectors didn’t want to say to my mother: “But he does look a little different…..(or goofy….or even ugly).” They didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so they all concentrated over and over on those brown eyes.
But how about my ears? They never mentioned that. And yes, I have heard people talk about a baby’s ears. “Doesn’t he have big ears?” is one comment, or another I can recall: “His ears do fit close to his head, don’t they?”
But nothing about my ears. I guess you would call them regular ears.
Other comments about other babies over the years I have heard went in other directions.
“Why look at that sweet smile!” Or “You can’t get a bigger smile than that one,” with sometimes an addition: “And he just continues to smile.”
Or this one: “He (or she) looks like a contented baby.” Of course, that makes the mother beam with pride.
There’s another area where people would compliment a mother about her baby. They would say nothing to a young mother that would reflect problems with a baby in normal social circumstances. And they feel they must say something about this relatively new person. And you know every new mother wants people noticing her baby, of whom she is so proud. So they have to think of a compliment of some sort.
“He sure seems healthy, and look at that smooth skin.”
Or: “He’s a mighty fine baby, not giving you a bit of trouble, not crying nor fretting nor causing trouble.”
Makes me wonder if I was fretful, or difficult. I might have been, but if so, all anyone mentioned were those “beautiful brown eyes.”
Next time you run across a mother with a new baby, of course, you will try to compliment her and her child. At least talk about more than one quality you see in the new babe. For me, that continuous talking about my brown eyes got old quickly.
(Wink).
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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