Eggshell children are our most fragile and precious resource. They can grow into great diviners, discoverers of fabulous new lyrical machines. If they can grow into human reeds there will be a white kind of moonlit magic again. But with even the most tolerant of parents, an eggshell child is in constant danger. You see, eggshell children want to last forever. They want to be free and always have their own way. They scream and cry at amazing volumes and cannot be dissuaded from expressing rage, terror, and despair, and though they also excel at having fun, at bringing delight, there are times when their parents feel like handling them roughly. Usually much violence has been done to the parents in their own childhoods — but they are big, meaty, solid people, not delicate instruments of music like the eggshell child. One fist could cave an eggshell child in completely and it would lie dying, broken into fine blue shards.
This has led to a proliferation of forums on the care of eggshell children.
Here are some of the basic rules:
When they are born do not hold them upside down by the feet and smack their bottoms as this will ruin their little eggshell arses. Do not deliberately put them in rocking cradles on window sills in the breeze. Watch your subconscious urges with them; don’t suddenly forget and clap them on the back. Don’t throw them a rock, a hard ball, a spoon. Don’t grab their hands when they try to run away from you. Don’t pull their teeth out with strings and doorknobs. And, finally, do not slap eggshell children’s faces in anger — this can not only completely ruin their cheeks, but also crush leagues and leagues of delicate diamonds in their eyes.