Thursday, March 7, 2013

Wipe me baby!



One of the facts of life is that all babies need their faces wiped along with other parts of the body on a regular basis. While I accept this premise as a necessary evil for MOIST newborns, I am terrified of the prospect for myself as a dried up prune, rapidly marching toward geezer-dom into an even bigger n’ balder baby Huey.  No I haven’t succumbed to the allure of full blown portly Pull-Ups yet, but I do notice the craggy corners of my mouth retain more nutritional supplements than just a few years back.

If you thought leftovers were unappetizing before, try finding them several hours later stuck to your cheeks - inexplicably even if you’ve been wearing pants all day. Yes, I am not sure if with old age I’ve become less skilled with a spoon or if nature has cruelly called and out-sourced my mouth’s nerve-endings to send them to my aching knees n’ amazing feets.  These days barely a meal goes by where I cannot crustify and justify a doubled-up napkin three times over after an overflowing feed-bag feast. 

You would normally think pigging out on Pablum and the skills required to clean up afterward would become easier with perennial practice and advancing age. After all, I should now be fairly low maintenance since unlike real babies, I sit in my high chair willingly and can burp myself without being bounced. However as I get older, no matter how carefully I conspire to consume crumbs, when the plates are purloined, I’m always the dude with the food left ringing both face and placemat.

Since it’s rare that I have Wet-Naps in my wallet, I have asked my wife repeatedly for a wet nurse instead, but for some reason she finds my 'hygiene-ks' droll and says my idea is all wet. She’ll be sorry though when I soon turn to the ‘bottle’ to deal with my loss of dignity, self-respect, and a stubbled chin stuck shut from last night’s DIN. I hope my wife likes cleaning cruton-coated big babies, or if that’s not challenging enough, in a few years she can look forward to wiping something far lower on the 'spewed-food' chain -  a ‘DIRTY old man’!