by Larry Doyle
However, you can do this yourself, at home, and for less than five dollars. First, purchase a 16" square of 2"-thick foam padding (depending on the size of your baby’s head and his propensity for banging it into things, you may want to go with 3" foam) and “mold” it to your baby’s head [Fig. A]. Secure the foam in place by wrapping it completely with any commercial packing tape [Fig. B], then trim the excess foam. Tuck the whole thing into an attractive bonnet [Fig. C] and it’s hardly noticeable. It also can be disassembled at any time, before bathing for instance, although this is neither necessary nor advisable.
INTO THE MOUTHS AND EYES OF BABES
Babies are naturally curious. An admirable trait perhaps, but the downside is that a baby’s curiosity is directed almost exclusively at objects that choke, poison, pinch, cut, bruise, burn, irritate, infect, abrade, blind, or are expensive to replace, thus setting into motion the toxic cycle of blame and guilt that will lead inexorably to your baby dysfunctioning down the road and deciding to become an artist—in other words, an emotional loss leader and chronic income siphon. An entire industry has sprung up preying on these fears, marketing devices that allegedly “babyproof” your home—outlet plugs, cabinet latches, cable lock boxes—but these contraptions can be easily circumvented by clever babies, and certainly by any baby worth having.
Again, you can do better than store-bought, and for far less money. You will need four " x " metal plates, about 12" of coated copper wire, a 12-volt battery, a roll of electrical tape, and a small electronic buzzer, horn, or siren. Fully insulate the baby’s hands and then tape two plates onto each palm about " apart [Fig. D] Run wires up along the arms to the power source/soundmaker assembly, located on the baby’s back [Fig. E]. Each time your baby picks up a dangerous metal object, the completed circuit will set off the soundmaker, alerting you and nonverbally communicating to the baby that the object should be dropped [Fig. F]. You can extend this deterrent effect throughout your household by wrapping stripped copper wire around bottles of cleansers, drugs, and other items you do not wish your baby to touch (your Blu-ray, for example). Which noises are most effective vary from baby to baby; you will want to experiment. Also, top-notch babies will quickly acclimate to particular sounds, and may even begin to enjoy making them, so be prepared to vary the sound and volume frequently. But try to stay away from low, harsh buzzers or horns, which can sound overly judgmental.
DEFENDING YOUR BABY’S PRIVATE ENTERPRISE
While maintaining your baby’s reproductive organs has no direct bearing on your investment return (on the contrary, reproduction-driven babies sometimes choose to reinvest profits in babies of their own rather than paying much-deserved dividends), it is nevertheless critical to preserve the integrity of this area. Unauthorized tampering with your baby’s reproductive organs can result in a devalued baby content to spend its life in some go-nowhere civil service job; or, worse, continued abuse can produce a downtown performance artist—in other words, an economic sinkhole.
Protecting your baby’s private enterprise from unwanted public intervention can be accomplished inexpensively using items purchasable through several mail-order hunting catalogs.
As seen in Figure G, a spring-loaded animal trap (0–6 months, rabbit; 7–12 months, fox; 12 months and up, bear) is doubled back on itself and concealed by decoy diaper flaps. With most models, the spring mechanism can be adjusted to wound, cripple, or amputate unauthorized personnel who transgress the area.
OTHER DANGERS
But what, you may ask, about prowlers; kidnappers; drunk drivers; hurricanes; serial killers; biker gangs; falling plaster; gypsies; botulism; freaked-out junkies; wounded fugitives; Satan worshippers; bricks hurled through windows; disturbed, maternally fixated young women; teen punks out for sick fun; giant sinkholes that houses are sometimes inadvertently built over; old lovers driven insane by your happiness; boulders; anti-family terrorists; small plastic parts; twisted nannies; ball lightening; psychotic nurses; rampaging postal workers; rifts in the space-time continuum; cannibals; in the northern United States, wolves; in the Southwest, rattlesnakes; in the Everglades, gators; on the Lower East Side, ferrets; and in more American homes than ever before, cats—any or all of which might strike while you’re in the bathroom with the hair dryer going? Good question.
The answer, sadly, is this: Babies are a risk. That’s the nature of the business. Given the long-term rewards they offer, most investment counselors agree that they are an acceptable risk; nevertheless, you should be prepared for the possibility that one day you may glance away, only for a moment, and when you look back, your baby will be gone and all the time and money and emotion you’ve invested will have gone, for what? You may want to limit your exposure accordingly.
Also, just to be on the safe side, buy a gun and teach your baby how to use it.
Material*
Reading your old stuff yields the occasional small pleasure—a bit of ferocious naïveté or idiosyncratic phrasing that was possible before you became a bitter hack. But also gastrointestinal distress, as provoked by the piece below. While it certainly illustrates the dangers of writing while crying, including it in the collection would have led to further demands that I finally get help, and so I had to leave it out.
Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I don’t deserve your love. You’re too good for me. What I really need is a bigger, better-looking audience that can satisfy me sexually.
Good night! Drive safe!
Thank you. That was just a little scene from something I’m working on. I call it, “My Love Life.”
Hey.
You know, I’m really excited to be here at Laffies tonight, talking to all you folks, because I just broke up with my girlfriend—she got the dog and I got the material. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I tried some of it out on my good friend Lucy about four o’ clock the other morning, and she says to me, “You know, Larry, maybe you should be talking to a therapist about this,” and I say, “But he always laughs in the wrong places,” and she says, “Okay, then that’ll be eighty-five dollars.”
Heyyy. Maybe I should have taken the dog.
You probably know my girlfriend. You can’t miss her. She’s right there at the center of the fucking universe. No, I don’t mean that. Actually, she’s very sweet. Here, let me tell you a little bit about my girlfriend—
Ex-girlfriend? What are you, the prefix police? No, no, I mean, thank you, sir. You are right, of course. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. I think I’ve got that now. And who is that with you tonight, sir? Your girlfriend? Well, let’s be technically correct here. She’s your future ex-girlfriend, right? So what’s your future ex-girlfriend’s name, sir? Huh? Don’t you know? You, sweetheart, whatever your name is, hate to tell you this, but that’s a bad sign.
My former future ex-girlfriend’s name is Barb. As in Barbarian. Barbed wire. Barbecued heart on a stick. No, no, actually it’s short for Barbara, of course. That’s a beautiful name, don’t you think? Bar-ba-ra. I call her my little yellow flower. She’s so beautiful she…
So my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, is a teacher. Are there any teachers out there? You, ma’am? Fuck you! No, no, I love teachers. But I have a question for you. You’ve got kids around you all day long—why would you want one of your own at home? I mean, isn’t twenty-six enough? Don’t you see the kind of pressure you’re putting…
Where was I? Oh, yes, Barbara. She’s so cute; she’s always really concerned about her weight. Now, I’m not saying she’s fat or anything, but she does have her own gravitational field. It’s slight, but with the sensitive instruments they have available today—if you throw a dozen doughnuts at her at just the right angle they make rings, like Saturn.
Oh God. I can’t believe—I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not fair. She really works so hard on it. And it’s really not true. She has a beautiful face. Really. Her eyes…
Anyway, we broke up after three years. Guys, have you ever noticed that when a woman wants to br
eak up with you, she has this secret female code she uses? Like, she starts saying things like, “You’ll never change.” Change into what? Superman? Or how about this one: “I can’t take much more of this.” This? This. Could you possibly be less specific?
Or, and guys, how many times have you heard this one: “I don’t love you anymore.” Yeah, right. I’m, like, “No, what is it, really?” And so finally you drag it out of her, and she says, “I want to see other people.” And I’m, like, “Great! You want to see other people? I can be other people!”
Who do you want to see? A celebrity, like Regis Philbin? Hey, I’m so much in love with you it’s driving me crazy! I’m outta control!
Thank you.
I say, Hey, you want to see some big strong hunky guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger? I can do that. You’ll be back. Hasta mañana, baby. Or how about, I know how much you like that movie The Quiet Man, it always makes you cry, is that how you want me to act? There’ll be no locks and bolts between us, Barbara Kate, except those in your own mercenary heart. Is that what you want? Me to just take you by the arm and throw you…
I’m sorry. Give me a second here.
Hey. Let’s change gears, shall we? So I go into this convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes—I don’t smoke them anymore; I just watch them burn—and this guy behind the counter, he doesn’t speak any English at all. I mean not a word, not even, for example, “cigarette.” So I talked to him for about six hours about Barb. He didn’t seem to mind. Really nice guy.
Funny story.
I ran into Barb on the way over here, strangely enough right in front of her house.
And I say, “Hey, I know you…”
And she says, “Larry, one hundred yards. The restraining order specifically—”
“Wait, wait,” I say. “Aren’t you…? Aren’t you the one? Yes, you are, aren’t you, the one who recently caused a cosmic rift in the universe that will soon bring life as we know it to a cold dark end?”
“They’ve added extra patrols,” she says. “I haven’t seen one drive by in a while, so it’s only a matter of time…”
“It has been a long time, hasn’t it, Barb?”
And she says, “I gave ’em your U of I sweatshirt—for the canine unit.”
“How long has it been, Barb? Since you broke my heart into more than one hundred noninterlocking pieces? How long do you think?”
“Nine days.”
“So you’re counting ’em, too, huh? Wow. Nine days. That’s almost two weeks. Two whole weeks… My, my… Isn’t that something?
“You know,” I say. “I never found anybody else.”
“Maybe you should try another block,” Barb says.
“So, Barb,” I say. “It’s not too late to come crawling back, you know.”
“No, thank you,” she says.
So I say, “I don’t want to have to beg, Barb.”
“Good,” she says.
“I have more dignity than that,” I say. “I shouldn’t have to beg for anything. Please, please, PLEASE, don’t make me beg!”
So now I’m down on my knees, because, you know, it feels right, and I really feel like I’m making my case: “You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me! You hate me!”
She looks down and she says, “Larry, I don’t hate you.”
“You still love me! You love me! You love me! You love me! You love me!”
She looks down at me and she says softly, “Larry, this is humiliating.”
She’s cracking, I can see that. I’ve got her now, right? I break out my big guns.
“I’m worthless! I’m a worm! I’m a worthless worm! I don’t know why you ever liked me! I’m so worthless and wormy! Why? Why’d you ever go out with me in the first place?”
She looks down at me with those big brown eyes and she says:
“You make me laugh.”
And I just look up at her, tears in my eyes, for effect, and I say:
“But I can’t be this funny all the time!”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all so very much.
Thanks a lot. I think this really helped. The rest of the week you can catch me on the corner of Jane and Greenwich, muttering to myself, and then this Saturday I’ll be at Nuts and Dolts in Nutley, New Jersey. Before I go, I’d like to leave you with one thought: If you can’t be with the one you love, get a better lawyer than the one I got.
Good night! Drive safe!
How to Talk to Your Dog*
This is my favorite humor piece. The only problem with it is that it isn’t funny. (Also, “Bad Dog” is the inverse, or converse, or obverse of it). And so it is with great regret that I must exclude it from this collection.
Have you ever noticed that you always know when your dog wants to go “out”? Or when he is hungry? Or when he is angry with you or others?
You know because your dog is already talking to you!
Dogs are natural actors, instinctively adept at using their bodies and facial expressions to communicate with you nonverbally. They are also expert mimes, capable of performing a vast repertoire of deceptively simple routines to subtly get their points across. Some of these “bits” are universal (e.g., nosing the dog dish to indicate hunger, drinking out of the toilet to indicate thirst), but most are specific to the dog. For example, my own dog, Flynn (a seven-year-old Irish setter), raises his paw and points at the television screen when he wants me to change the channel.
Many dog owners are content to communicate with their pets solely on this preverbal level. But imagine how handy it would be if, in addition to being able to alert you when somebody was at the door, your dog could also tell you who it was (dogs, remember, have a keen sense of smell). Or how enriching your relationship with your dog would be if the two of you could just “shoot the breeze” sometimes.
You will learn more about how to do this in the next chapter.
EXERCISES: Try this simple nonverbal exchange: place both hands firmly on either side of your dog’s head. Apply firm pressure and pull your dog’s face close to yours (between 1" and 2" is optimum). Now, smile broadly and—again, using both hands—vigorously stroke your dog in an upward motion from the base of his neck to just behind his ears. Your dog will understand this as meaning, “I like you. I value you as my dog.” If your dog then licks your face, that means, “I like you, too!” (Do not be discouraged if your dog does not immediately lick your face. The setting may be too intimate for him, or, more likely, he is just not a licker.)
THE CANINE TONGUE
Dogs are the most vocal of all domesticated animals. Whereas the cat goes meow, the cow goes moo, the sheep goes baa, and the pig goes oink-oink, the dog is not limited by these crude utterances. The average American dog can bark, howl, yap, snap, growl, whimper, woof, yelp, bay, howl, whine, gnarl, mutter, and, of course, bow-wow. In fact, many scientists believe that if dogs had more highly developed brains and sophisticated vocal cords, they could converse much like humans do.
But make no mistake: dogs do “speak,” and not just as a parlor trick. My own close examination of the canine tongue reveals that dogs have a “vocabulary” in excess of 2,000 words. Fortunately, nearly all of these words roughly translate into the English word “food” (dogs have more than 120 words for dry food alone), and so you will only need to learn a working vocabulary of about 400 words in order to talk to your dog.
Pronunciation can be tricky, however. The canine alphabet differs significantly from ours, featuring a fraction of our consonants (b, f, h, p, r, w, and sometimes y) and the rounder vowel sounds, which are more “sung” than “spoken.” Words are therefore primarily distinguished by minor variations in pronunciation (dogs can differentiate twelve types of r sounds and five degrees of hardness in the letter b). From this deceptively sparse phoneme palette, dogs are thus able to create a comparatively rich language.
A basic Canine/
English dictionary can be found at the back of this book, but you should be aware of few matters of form and style before attempting to use it.
Eschew Excess Barking. Dogs tend to follow Strunk and White’s dictum about omitting needless words and avoiding weak modifiers. Rather than saying something smells “very tasty,” a dog will simply bark “tasty” (woh-af), placing added emphasis on the initial vowel sound and saying the entire word louder.
Regarding Plurals and Possessives. There is no true plural in the canine tongue. Rather, your dog, seeing another dog, may say, Rarf! (“Hey, there’s another dog!”), whereas, upon seeing a pack of dogs, your dog will likely exclaim: Rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf! Possessives, on the other hand, are usually indicated with a low growl.
Some Things Just Won’t Translate. Not all human concepts are meaningful to dogs; for instance, there is no dog word for “stay.” Likewise, there are several dog phrases which cannot be translated adequately into English (a few of these do have analogues in German and Chinese, however). Among the more enigmatic dogisms you are likely to encounter:
Bow wow—This frequently uttered canine cant provides an intriguing look at your dog’s overall philosophy. Directly translated into English, bow wow means, simply, “I am.” But to your dog, it means something ineffably more.
Rowp! Rowp!—Usually delivered enthusiastically with your dog’s head thrown back, means something along the order of “Would you listen to that? Is that loud or what?”