On The Resilience of Balloons and People

The Beneficiary and I went to Chili's for supper and found ourselves sitting in a booth next to a couple who were an easy (literally) 400 lbs EACH. They had their child with them, a toddler, two or maybe three years old. Highly mobile, but mostly pre-English, if you know the age, eating her chicken strips and drinking her milk and bouncing around doing little kid stuff. I had a flash of curiosity as to how they'd managed the "having a kid" thing, as getting the child-production machinery into a configuration that would actually be functional would almost certainly have involved some unknown physics, perhaps something related to dark matter or another "we know it exists, but damned if we can figure it out" mystery on the edge of human knowledge.

But it was an offhand sort of curiosity. They seemed happy enough, and that's as much as you can ask, I guess. It's certainly all I ever ask of anyone. Well, that, and to leave me and mine alone.

No, I was actually mostly interested in the little girl -- children that age are more fun than kittens, and this one was no exception. For some reason, almost all kids in that age-range "recognize" me as somehow familiar and safe. I've had more than a few watch me intensely trying to figure out whether I'm their grandfather. About 80% of the time, they'll wander over to me, or smile, or wave, or do something that indicates that they're convinced I'm someone they know and like. I haven't a clue what that's about. They apparently haven't developed the part of their brain that instinctively recognizes me as a...difficult(?)...person, or they see that I'll always stand between them and bad things. Or maybe none of that, and that's just what they do.

Anyway, it doesn't bother me, really -- as I said, I like kids that age. This one spent her time veering between solemnly watching me while she carefully chewed on a chicken strip, and playing the version of hide-and-seek that involves her peeking over the back of the seat and then suddenly dropping back out of sight giggling hysterically when I'd suddenly "discover" her and wave.

Her parents finally got done shoveling in their (objectively and no exaggeration) massive dinner, paid their bill, and left, with the very small toddler running along in front of them and behind them and between them. They moved in slow motion, untethered barrage balloons slowly drifting around one another, occasionally bumping and gently ricocheting off into new tangents. I commented to the Beneficiary on what a miracle it was that the kid had lived this long. She asked what I meant.

"Really? You don't wonder?" I said, pointing at the three as mom and dad waddled down the sidewalk with the toddler weaving in and out, under their legs, and between them. "How does that kid get to be walking age without being crushed into grease? It must be like being raised by farm machinery."

Sounds mean doesn't it? Well, maybe the way you would have said it, it would have been. Shame on you. (And if you bought that for a second, now I'm laughing at you.)

But I really was, and no kidding, wondering how they could keep up with her. I know people who are capable of considerably more speed and agility and yet are constantly on the verge of a meltdown trying to corral and control sprogs that age. And I'd include the Beneficiary and me on that list. Kids that age are a lot of fun for someone like me who's just playing peekaboo and laughing with them -- but a major PITA for those who have to actually raise them.

Anyhow, it tied into an economics podcast I'd been listening to earlier in the day in which the main theme was that it really doesn't matter what you do to raise your kids short of physical abuse and/or starvation, as long as they've got good genetics and you love them and they know it. In short, if one takes care of the basics of Kalahari Desert-style pre-history family structure, which is to say, investing one's child-rearing time and resources into keeping the kid from starving, breaking, or being eaten by something, at least until they're old enough to fend for themselves, they'll probably be OK. Or as OK as they ever would have been anyhow.

All the other foofarah, the schools, the extracurricular activities, the hands-on "helicopter" parenting, scheduling, languages, ponies, karate lessons, and on and on and on... they all have essentially zero value in determining the outcome of their lives. (http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/17/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-economists-guide-to-parenting/)

I guess that means the balloon people have as good a shot at a happy (or not) child-rearing result as anyone.

There's probably also some kind of lesson in there about human resilience represented by the happy little girl just living her life orbiting what by most standards would be less than effective (and perhaps borderline dangerous) parents. But it's either so obvious you've already got it or so obscure that I'm too lazy to tease it out just now.

Either way, let's just log this one under my "Occasionally, people are pretty interesting" tag and move along.