Good Intentions: How I Became a L-H-C-D-C MEM

We have a friend in town for a few days. A very large, hairy, meat-eating friend who isn’t married, doesn’t have kids, and doesn’t want them. Apparently part of his duty as a guest is to participate in our musings about why our child is going through a somewhat fussy stage right now.

As we endure a few minutes of pre-nap wailing, we all sit in the living room contemplating the possibilities …

I speculate, “Could it be that he’s gotten a little spoiled since he was sick for a week and we held him a lot? Or maybe he’s starting to feel some separation anxiety. Or perhaps he’s just learned a new cry and enjoys causing his vocal cords to make the sound of a fire engine.”

The husband imagines that it’s probably just because of the time change.

The hairy carnivore hypothesizes (aloud, as he chomps on a bag of beef jerky), “Maybe he’s hungry? Or the other thing is that he could be teething. Did you check his diaper?”

After this incident I began to deliberate on all of the well-intentioned conversations I’ve had with various people about my son. There’s the grocery store check-out clerk, who, as baby begins to fuss in the cart, says (in sing-song voice) “Oh my goodness, Mommy, it’s time for my nap!” And there’s the secretary at my husband’s work, who always asks my child if his mother has fed him enough today. And then there’s my mother-in-law, who wonders whether he may be suffering from Lyme disease as the result of a microscopic baby tick falling out of a tree, landing on his head, and lodging there without our knowing about it. The list could go on.

Why do people think it’s OK to give me advice about my job? Do I appear to be that unqualified? Would these people EVER give recommendations to people who work outside the home? I know you think this is ridiculous, but I stayed up for several hours last night brooding over this.

Would they ask a doctor, “Hmmm, have you checked the thyroid?” Or, “Possibly the patient is suffering from chronic meat-eating and has clogged arteries.” Or, “Maybe he’s just a pompous know-it-all whose brain has gotten too big and stretched out his head.” OK, maybe not, because doctors study long and hard to attain their status and usually they know more than your average, furry, childless, deer-sausage-eating male.

So, let’s think of people who don’t necessarily study for years in order to do their jobs …

Imagine a bank teller who is wondering why her money isn’t balancing out. Would these same well-intentioned guidance counselors EVER ask whether or not she’s checked the nickel drawer? Or question whether perhaps she hasn’t put back that dollar she borrowed for her afternoon snack? Or, worse, could she have possibly spent the entire day absent-mindedly pocketing the money?

Now, maybe this bank teller has read What to Expect When You’re Expecting Your Drawer to Balance or The Happiest Banker on the Block, or maybe she’s even gone to community college for a couple years. But can we honestly say that she knows more about counting the money in her drawer than a mother knows about her own child? Yet I doubt that even a hirsute know-it-all would venture to offer her suggestions about how to do her job.

Why are moms different?

My husband says they’re not. He says that people offer him advice about his job all the time. I said like what. He said they always offer to help him out when his state-issued non-four-wheel-drive truck (yeah, that’s really helpful for a park ranger) gets stuck in the mud while he’s trying to rid the Overton Hills of the invasive species Asian Bush Honeysuckle.

That’s very different! That’s offering help, not suggestions. If those same helper-outters said, “What you really need to do is feed the hurt, captive birds-of-prey free-range mice rather than those icky, white, pink-eyed, pre-killed, frozen lab rats,” then that would be unnecessary advice. That is an annoying suggestion which, to me, is akin to asinine questions such as “Is the baby hungry or wet?”

Contrary to popular belief, I actually feed AND change the baby before putting him down to nap AND before going on outings (I know, I know, I’m superwoman). And not only that, but I have also read lots of books about babies. Sleeping, teething, sign language, nursing, and starting solids are just some of the topics on which I am considered to be pretty well-read. But apparently people don't consider this before opening their big, fat, blood-dripping, albeit well-intentioned, mouths.

On the other hand, these baby advice-givers never say, “Oh, can I help since you’ve got your hands full there trying to nurse the baby while opening your purse to pull out the debit card and still keep your boob out of sight from the perverted grocery-bagger boy?” Or even, “Let me get that door for you.”

Well, what goes around comes around in this house.

The abovementioned male guest at our house arrived on the day after I became the final person in our family to live through the awful stomach virus that has been going around. (I got it just after it mutated into something close to amoebic dysentery.) The guest was fore-warned about the virus, but came to visit anyway, and claims “to have a steel stomach” … to be “unable to contract airborne viral infections,” and he acts like I’m a total hypochondriac wimp who has dreamed up the very concept of contagious disease. Ironically, he is an EMT, a park ranger with Wilderness First Responder credentials, a person who reads textbooks about quantum physics in his free time. (I know quantum physics isn’t directly related to communicable disease transferal, but my point is that he’s a smart (-ass) guy.)

But he will rue the day he comes down with the virus because I will sit outside the guest bathroom door while liquid toxins spew from his orifices and jeer loudly:

“Maybe it’s all the deer sausage in your diet.”

Or …

“Perchance you have Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica, or Cryptosporidium.”

Or simply …

“Na-na-na-boo-boo, you got the poo poo flu flu.”

Just call me a L-H-C-D-C-MEM (large-hairy-carnivorous-divorced-childless Man Eating Monster).