proposed signage
DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING
CAREFUL NOW!
(from Father Ted)
ANTIDISEST-
ABLISHMENT-
ARIANS OUT!
(all my own work)
Claire was three months old yesterday. She’s the hardest-working baby in San Francisco. Every waking moment is dedicated to achieving developmental goals. When she’s not making up avant-garde choral pieces to test her vocal range, or grinning maniacally at her parents and alloparents in the interests of promoting attachment, she’s riding diligently on an invisible bicycle to build up her muscle mass and gross motor skills. As an ex-Protestant, I regard her work ethic with awe.
The fun, we’re told, is just beginning. Human childbirth hurts because we’re both highly intelligent and bipedal. We have the biggest skulls that can possibly be forced through a narrow, upright pelvis. It’s the old engineering trade-off: smart, mobile and painless – pick any two.
To make sure that women don’t actually die giving birth, our babies are born very early, developmentally speaking. Some biologists think of the first three months as the fourth trimester, and the baby as an extra-gestate fetus. So Claire is now at the stage where, if she were a different species of chimpanzee, she’d be ready to be born.
