"Gravity Won’t Listen to Me!"
May 15, 2013
Notable Stats
Screeches Per Hour (SPP) – The number of times your toddler screams in frustration with the physical sciences.
Happy Go Lucky Vector (HGLV) – The direction your toddler goes when he or she wants to challenge reality, like lightning or avalanches.
Our 16 month old is upset. She is at war with physical elements that are part of living on the planet Earth. Despite her screaming demands, we cannot turn off gravity using the kitchen faucet. But that does not stop her from being ticked off. She will hold a grudge against her parents because we will not let her push a stroller with her brother and sister in it across I-95. She is confident she can push 100 pounds with her pinky if we would only get out of the way.
It is the age when toddlers are mad at everything. Friction is annoying, wind is silly, heat is prejudiced against diaper-wearing beings. And nothing we say or do will calm her from this position.
So every once in a while, we see the tantrum coming. It isn’t the kind of tantrum that is caused by jealously or from our physically re-directing her from sprinting off of the top step head first; it is one that lets us know that Earth’s flaws are our doing… and we need to get Earth off of her back.
Rain, rain, go away, we say. We chant, but in toddler nation, there is an expectation for the rain to listen with both ears. Then when rain decides it will not listen, the fault lies with parents and their incompetent lives.
It is indicative of the planet toddlers live on. In effect they are not children, they are moons, they are satellites that somehow got into a parental orbit that forcibly changed the rules on them. They used to enjoy floating in amniotic fluid like they would on Planet Toddler. They could throw a baseball from the equator to the North Pole, they could take a bite out of a mountain side and it would taste like a corn dog.
But from the nefarious work of her parents, we have forced her into the corrupt planetary prison of Earth’s atmosphere. We have imposed ridiculous constructs like the boiling point of water, or that ice is cold, or that moving vehicles actually move. We use this physical reality to imprison her mind, body, and soul and she is planning to tell her real leaders, her four year old brother, and her three year old sister, about it.
Before she can convince Planet Toddler to wage war on Earth, she at least realizes it will take time to win the war. So she has to buy time by fake smiling and cooing about being in a high chair (don’t need one of these in a planet where you can just float at the table) or by pretending to be amused when her parents do not understand her native tongue of MarbleMouth.
She is buying time until she can call on the military takeover of Mother Earth. She will learn Earth’s primitive ways, yet still plans to protest at every turn when Earth’s tactics stifle her natural order. Then one day, Earth will fall to the physical rules of her world, and in this world, people will not need diapers; people will be able to eat plastic for sustenance, people will be able to point at an object and it will fly into their hands. In the meantime, she will quietly try and re-train her siblings since they clearly have been corrupted. They must re-learn truths like how orange juice comes from pointing at a doorknob, kicking your feet two times, and screeching to the song “Hush Little Baby.” This will take time.
- Doug Glanville
