Babies Everywhere

I was trying to find something on Netflix to watch with my baby, and they just added the movie, Babies.

Having just gone through the initial horrors of having a child, I was wondering how babies fare in the rest of the world.

People were in an uproar when Britney Spears drove her car down her driveway with her baby in her lap. In Mongolia, they drive with babies being carried on the back of motorcycles with their firstborn clinging to the front, over a grassy plain. The mom couldn’t even get on the bike the first try, because she couldn’t balance the baby properly, and the dad’s already revving up the engine like he’s going to peel out. There wasn’t a helmet in sight. Presumably, the grassy earth would cushion any kind of crash they might have.

When you think about Africa, you might think about how impoverished it is. Babies don’t have diapers, or wet naps. There’s not even anything covering their asses, because anything you put on it will immediately become covered in shit, and there’s nothing to exchange it with, and no way to wash it. When the baby shit, it  shits, it shits all over the place. If you’re carrying a baby, the baby shits all over you. That’s why upon first evolving we were all hunter/gatherers. The men folk would go out an hunt and leave the women at home to tend to the babies, because the babies were shitting everywhere. In the movie, the African mother has to wipe up the baby’s shit off her leg with an old corn cob, seemingly used for this specific purpose of wiping up shit. They have to clean other people’s shit off themselves with rotting produce, which they must keep in their huts. If you’ve ever changed a diaper, you’ll know how much shit a baby can produce, and it’s questionable consistency. After a while, you’ll begin to wonder if your own newborn is secretly plotting against you because of the volume of shit coming out of it. Now imagine that shit being all over you and your things 24/7.

Bear in mind this wasn’t one of those starving babies they show you in those donation ads. This is a happy, healthy baby will a full tummy. Everyone’s happy and loving life. This is what’s happening in the good parts of Africa. Imagine the bad parts. Holy fuck.