Don’t call me, baby

STYLE, OCTOBER 2001

I DO NOT HAVE children. I have never had children, although I did once have the mumps, and on several occasions I have had house guests. I don’t know if you have ever had house guests. On the whole I preferred the mumps. Mumps may cause a certain amount of physical discomfort and even temporary disfigurement, but they never say: “I wonder what’s on the other channel?” or “So what are we doing tomorrow?”

At any rate, I have had better luck avoiding children than I have avoiding house guests. I avoid children the way sensible folk avoid an in-flight meal, or Mark Gillman. In the main, it is easy to avoid children. They are smaller than you and cannot run as fast, and if worse comes to worst and you are forced to fight, you can count on your greater readiness to punch dirty. Still, increasingly I am finding myself thrust into the proximity of infants.

I have long been of the opinion that aeroplanes should be divided into three classes: Business, Economy and Infant. My proposals are still tentative, but at present I conceive of Infant class as a lead-lined canister somewhere in the hold.

I’m always irate when I’m told that I cannot bring a second piece of hand-baggage onto the plane with me. The last time it happened, I pointed at some Russian-looking woman brushing wisps of hair out of her face. “But look at her!” I complained. “She’s carrying two pieces of luggage!” “One of those is a baby, sir,” said the steward firmly. For some reason, women carrying babies onto aeroplanes look Russian to me. I don’t know why. “But my hand-baggage isn’t going to scream and discharge fluids,” I yelled. “It’ll just sit there under my seat! No one will even know it’s there! Tell me true – wouldn’t you rather have my stylish hand-valise with retractable handle on your plane than that squirming mass of barely differentiated epithelial cells?” But as you will know if you have ever tried to rage against the monstrous regimen of infants, it was to no avail.

Babies are everywhere these days. Worse, babies are where I am whenever I go into a public place. Babies have become the new accessory. They are what Alsatian dogs were to Capetonians a few years ago: people just can’t seem to go out to a restaurant without them. Happily, I have not as yet noticed any babies with red ethnic-print bandannas knotted around their necks, but that is a very small mercy indeed.

What’s more, nowadays I can’t even fight back by lighting a cigarette and pointedly exhaling into the push-pram that some simpering Russian woman has parked next to my table. That’s what the new smoking regulations are for! To make restaurants more baby-friendly! It’s an outrage. The only reason I took up smoking in the first place was that I happened to notice a packet with the warning sign: “Caution: smoking is harmful to children.” Aha, I thought. All I need is a nicotine habit and no right-thinking parents will bring their bundles of mewing fluids anywhere near me. My life will be shorter, but infinitely more elegant.

Still, although my sworn enmity to other people’s children holds as firm as ever, I am slowly coming round to the notion that one of my own might not be the end of the world, one day when self-cleaning infant-wear has been invented. I sat down this morning and drew up a list of the things that children have going for them. The list is surprisingly impressive. For instance:

• Children are almost always small of stature, which makes them useful for getting to those hard-to-reach places in the home.

• Children make very desirable Scrabble opponents, being both easy to beat and fun to cheat.

• Children on the whole ask far better questions than adults. “Why is the sky blue?” and “Why does mommy wear different clothes to you?” are on the whole more likely to receive a favourable response than “Where is your column?” or “Why haven’t you called?”

Children have other recommendations. Seldom do you find them wearing too much aftershave; only rarely do they pluck up the courage to make unnatural sexual requests; they are never of the opinion that you behave too childishly.

So I am gradually softening towards the wee folk, but I warn you, new parents of the nation: do not take this as a sign of weakness. Do not consider that open seat next to me as an invitation to sit down with your malodorous gurgler. Be cautioned: I have a packet of Stuyvesants, and I’m not afraid to use them.