Last night I met a newborn named Ryan Higgins. Ryan Higgins is not a baby name, it’s the name of a member of Parliament. Or a 1930s British anthropologist. Higgins, old boy, have a look at this bone.
But there was the young Mr. Higgins. He had a tired look. If he could have talked he would have said, You have no idea how tired I am. I’m bushed. I’m fried. Do you have any idea what its like to be a baby? Try an exhausting staff meeting and then at the end of it you can’t get out of your chair. You don’t know what a leg is. Or a foot. They’re just these floating things. Decent tasting.
You’re laying there trying to figure it all out and in comes someone like me who wants to hold, snuggle, and coo. Of course you’re going to barf. You’re an independent kind of guy.
Now maybe there are those of you who believe this is good luck, like a bird pooping on your head. Maybe. But it’s also smelly, like turned yogurt. It made me want to throw up, too. Then I remembered this story. When my friend Abigail was a little girl she got carsick and her father couldn’t just stop on the highway and there were no available plastic bags so Abigail’s mother cupped her own hands, earning a place in the pantheon of good, selfless moms.
Oh my goodness, don’t worry! I said, wiping my shirt. It’s to be expected! I tried to play like I’d been hurled upon countless times. It’s not so bad! If I could just borrow a t-shirt? And if we could get out of here right away? I want to go back to my life. The dry cleaned, self-involved, organic fruit-eating life.
Sorry, Higgins. We’ll meet again when you’re older—when your intestines are more fully formed. We’ll sip our drinks and talk politely about adult things, things like the weather and taxes and neither one of us will ever mention this incident.
Jumbo Shrimp
I wasn’t too sure about adding a very large, fresh water shrimp to our aquarium, but the pet shop was going out of business and Javier can’t refuse a bargain. “Look how cool,” he said, pointing excitedly to one of the half-empty tanks, “AND HE’S HALF OFF! We’ve got to get him!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s big. He might eat the fish.”
“No, no. Shrimp are scavengers.” Javier said in his teacher voice. I hate the teacher voice; it makes me want to act out, throw a spitball like I’m back in 7th grade.
Elizabeth Miller Bastos, a displaced Pittsburgher, currently lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Javier and an assortment of fish and plants. She daylights as a mid-level fundraising executive and moonlights as a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Appalachian Mountain Club Magazine, JewishHistory.com, Poetism.com and in Inkwell Magazine. She can be reached at seapup_3@juno.com.
