baby’s first photo

Fighting other new parents at the photo department of your local box store, that’s crazy.

I was thinking about this the other day, because so many of my co-workers are pregnant or have little kids. They talk about parenting as if they invented the subject.

They wax poetic about Toilet training. They swap stories about temper tantrums. Work comes to a complete stop when the topic of baby food arises.

Please!

I love my co-workers and I just laugh, cause I was once them. I remember when I was the first man’s who impregnated a woman to create a child. I remember when I had the first birth, and held the first child and wiped the first butt. My wife was the first woman to have discomfort and have sore nipples and demand asparagus flavored ice cream.

Been there! Done that people! That’s why I laugh.

Compared to these new parents or soon-to-be parents: I am the Albert Einstein of procreation.

While they maneuver wooden blocks trying to spell C -A – T, I am charting a course through a universe filled with cosmic black holes.

Compared to them; I am a 3 tour Vietnam Vet. I am battle scarred and ornery. They are a bunch of yahoos who just got off the mommy and daddy banana boat. That’s why when they talk about pablum, i cock my parenting m-16 and say; “let’s roll people.”

I enjoy their stories, because it reminds me of times when I was them. A time when everything was new, and the world had new purpose.

As I listened to a co-workers inappropriate story of his wife’s sore nipples, I thought back to a random story floating in my memory bank, back in the day, when my child was the first baby on the planet.

JULY 1ST 1992

The date is seared into my cerebellum like one of those time stamps on bad surveillance footage.

My son was a few months old. He looked adorable in his white sailor suit with the aqua trim. His eyes were glowing a fluorescent blue that matched the brilliant neckerchief of his little outfit. We were new parents, so we had no idea that we had dressed him up for his photo as one of the Village People.

My boy was cute, even though he had a pumpkin head and jowls like the underside of a cow. The only quasi-professional picture I had of the boy was that first one they take in the hospital. In that one he looks like a compressed tad pole still wet behind the ears with remnants of placenta. For this reason, we decided let’s get a professional portrait made.

As we walked through the KMART parking lot filled with stagnating North Carolina heat, I looked at the fruit of my loins. I smiled at him. His noggin was bouncing around like a bobble head doll under the influence. There was a trail of drool clinging to his toothless lower lip. It was clear and elastic. He reminded me of a frat party I had been to once.

Like marines storming the beaches of Okinawa, we exploded through the sliding glass doors of this mammoth shopping emporium. The automatic portal whooshed open as as a suction of hot, stagnant air rushed inside with us. At the same moment, artificially cooled air from inside, rushed outward through the door. It was like a meteorological event happening in the breezeway. The resulting clash was a horrific assault of molecules that created a tingling sensation on our bare skin as we trudged forward.

“Welcome K-Mart shoppers.” A recorded message rained down upon us like warm bath water.

I was immediately invited to check out a 2 for 1 spark plug sale on aisle 18.

I quickly started left.

My wife grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?”

“Spark plugs,” I said without so much as a grimace.

She rolled her eyes and continued heading to the back of the store.

The recorded message was quickly replaced by easy listening music. As I carried my child past the checkout counters, I winced as the familiar melody of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven slowly sifted it’s way down to my ears from the speakers above. It was a heinous, sacrilegious assault on musical greatness. The morons of K-Mart marketing, in their ultimate wisdom, decided to re-record this classical masterpiece with an eighty piece orchestral ensemble. Led Zeppelin was never created for instruments like cello’s and violins. I wanted to go into the glassware aisle and start throwing plates.

Somewhere Jimmy Page was sawing off his right hand with a cheese grater. I felt a nauseating sickness pervade my gurgling stomach as we trudged past a myriad of brightly colored toiletry items.

“Where do you think it is?” I asked the wife.

She shook her head simply as we turned a corner past hunting equipment.

I wondered if I could hold a child with one arm and load a shot gun with the other while blasting a speaker 50 feet above me. The idea was certainly enticing.

The music suddenly crackled into a muted hum. A man’s voice came over the intercom.

“Customer service emergency, aisle three. Baby Vomit!”

“Aisle three. That must be the place,” I said light heartedly.

We trudged ahead. Aisle ten, pots and pans. Aisle nine, lamps. Aisle eight, laxatives and lady things.

As we made our way through the catacombs of crap, another melodic song kicked me in the groin. I think it was a Sex Pistols song done on a xylophone.

I choked back my morning biscuit and continued forward through the onslaught of distortion.

Before entering the box store. I was prepared, and aware. I had a singular purpose and one purpose only. Take one baby picture. Get in, get out.

But now inside this gigantic, hypnotic world of easy listening and suggestive voices in the ceiling, I could sense my guard coming down.

I was a shopper, on the ropes. My gloves were up around my face. I was doing my best rope-a-dope, swaying left and right. But the retail giant with the musical boxing gloves and soothing intercom left hooks was punching me in the nose.

I could feel the subliminal messages infiltrating my subconscious, but I was becoming powerless to stop them.

“The new K-Mart lawn tractor. State of the art lawn care for just thirty five simple installments of one hundred and two dollars each. Make your lawn a K-Mart lawn.”

Sounds pretty good I thought to myself as my brain began turning to mush. I could use some better lawn care products. Who couldn’t?

I looked at the child and refocused on the task at hand. The kid was smiling and playing peak a boo in my shoulder.

I could tell, he liked K-Mart. There was a rainbow assortment of strategically placed merchandise coupled with melodic, soothing sounds designed to heighten the shopping experience.

That’s probably what it’s like inside the womb. Soothing, and melodic, all in preparation for the birth.

Well instead of birth, KMART gets you to open your wallet and spend dollars. In a way, you are birthing your money to them. And if you use a credit card, it’s like an umbilical cord that never gets cut at 18% interest.

Aisle five, extension cords. Aisle four, plywood furniture.

I could hear the piercing, primal screams of toddlers floating in the cacophony of sound above me. Like stalking the wild Ape, we were getting to close to the lair.

Aisle three. There was a large, hand written sign: Photos; line starts here. That’s when it all hit me.

It was Saturday morning. We were new parents, and we were doing what new parents do. We were having our child photographed at the local K-Mart. You know the deal. Sixty shots of varying size for $13.99. Babies of every conceivable size, shape and color were there ahead of us, waiting to be immortalized in a five by eight glossy picture.

The air was thick with anticipation as a horde of Southern women spoke to their offspring in an unintelligible array of sheered off consonants and vowels. Diction was thrown to the wind as these mothers scolded and soothed their little ones, who like my son, were dressed up like they were going to a gay biker bar.

Kids in bonnets and bows scotch taped to their bald heads. It was a baby freak show.

We immediately took our place in line. We were number seven. A fine number I thought to myself as we settled in for what we anticipated would be a short wait. I held the kid proudly as his smile beamed across aisle three like a light house beacon warning other ships of the ominous jagged coastline ahead.

I scrutinized the other children. They were obviously conceived from inferior breeding stock. The child ahead of us looked like a small primate as he sucked on a hair ball he had found wedged under a display rack. The little girl in front of him was dressed hideously in a multicolored phosphorescent smock. She looked like a baby clown that should have been smoking a cigar and climbing out of a midget car.

I looked at my pumpkin headed kid and smiled. He cooed loudly and defiantly.

“Next!,” the photo lady shouted. Her voice was rough and strident. I could tell she had a two pack a day habit. She was dressed entirely in black and moved with the gracefulness of a beached sea lion. She was masculine in her demeanor as she made adjustments and fine tuned camera angles.

Right before she snapped the picture, a phony smile spread across her face. “Smile for me, baby. Come on little fella, big smile for Ms. Gertie.”

Ms. Gertie? I was expecting the kid to start crying.

She waited, prodding, prancing, trying to pull the emotion from the toddler on the platform of purple shag carpet. At just the right moment, a massive aluminum beach umbrella suspended from the ceiling exploded into a flash of light. I imagined the nuclear radiation being generated by that sonic blast.

I looked at the butt faced baby on the platform wondering how many rads it takes to internally char the liver of a three year old.

My attention on the photographic proceedings was broken by a message piping in overhead.

“Attention K-Mart shoppers. There’s a red tag special on plant fertilizer in the garden department. Make your garden a K-Mart garden.”

The voice was gone, replaced by a trumpet solo of the Beatle’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

That nauseating feeling once again permeated my stomach, but for some reason I had a blood lust to plant pansies.

I looked at a Southern woman standing nearby. She was overweight and oily. Her day glow green spandex pants and matching tee shirt were visually overpowering. Her shopping ensemble reminded me of a traffic snarl in Beijing.

“Which aisle are the sunglasses in?,” I whispered to the wife.

“Behave!,” she said promptly.

I hoisted my son over my head and spun him around like a maneuver I had seen on WWF. I was the Iron Sheik and he was the “Baby” Junk Yard Dog.

As I spun around wildly, the products lining the shelves converged into one circular blur of energized color. I listened to the whirl of environmentally controlled air rushing past my ears. The more I spun, the more the Beatle’s song distorted into chaos. It sounded like rap master Satan was in the K-Mart audio booth scratching a disc.

I looked up at the baby boy as he floated above me. He was smiling and cocking his head oddly as the G forces twisted his pristine baby cheeks into a quivering mass of drooling flesh. The incandescent lights above us spun wildly. Blood was rushing to my head in a torrential down pour.

The kid was loving it, cooing wildly as we spun through the aisle like a washing machine gone amok.

Suddenly a large gush of drool exploded out of the child’s face, splashing across the bridge of my nose. It was as if someone opened a door on a centrifuge and whatever was inside was ejected at terminal velocity.

I stopped spinning. I gripped my toes into the floor trying not to crash suddenly, awkwardly into a display rack of radiator hoses. As I waited for the world to stop moving, I contemplated the velocity at which baby spit had just hit my face. Man that hurts, I thought to myself.

“A.C. Stop it. You’re going to make him sick.” The voice was suddenly recognizable. The wife was pissed and glaring at me with a motherly tone that demanded respect. “You’ll get him dirty for his picture,” She said.

Dirty? How is the kid going to get dirty? I’m holding him. Is he going to pick up some airborne contaminant? Are there KMART aisle monkeys throwing fecal matter and we’re in jeopardy of being soiled? Is there a PETA protester inside the store throwing buckets of blood on babies to protest the use of photographic paper?

There wasn’t time to retort. Other mothers stood behind her in a concrete veil of solidarity. I felt outnumbered. Overwhelmed! I was after all, the only man in line. That should have told me something right there. The other men had out-foxed me. They had disappeared to the automotive aisle where baby drool was replaced with 30-weight. Spandex replaced by air filters.

The fact that I was here in line, didn’t make me a hero, as I had thought. It made me a fool, and the other women let me know it with stares that undressed my soul.

I would have none of it. I was a new dad and it was time to do some new dad stuff. The photo line was moving with all the speed of an Oprah Book Club review, so I decided for a little impromptu bonding time. “We’re going on a journey,” I said turning my back on the angry mob of estrogen crazed women.

I tossed the kid over my head and started the airplane noise he enjoyed so much.

“Brrrrrrrrroooooooohhhhmmmm!” His exuberant giggle only inspired me to launch him to greater heights as we raced down the aisle. Past the picture frames, past the auto fresheners.

The kid was laughing. His eyes were rotating in their sockets like a gyroscope beside an electro-magnet. I was loving it too. We hung a left granny panties and headed into the toy department. The child’s eyes grew as big as saucers as we maneuvered past Play Skool and Fisher Price play sets. There were balls and bats and toy soldiers and bikes.

It was like bringing a drug addict to CRACK R US!

I wanted to sit him down on the cold linoleum and roll balls to him. I spotted a Nerf ball base ball set. What would happen if I batted balls to him in aisle twenty two. He’s just an infant, I thought to myself. You have to give him a few more months before you throw baseballs, and footballs at him.

The urge to play sports with my son was a strong one. What if he was a natural? Maybe he would gobble up grounders like Derek Jeter. Suck in spirals like Terrell Owens. How would I know unless I tried? I was tempted to rip open cardboard boxes and find out. Suddenly an image of my wife exploded into the visual cortex of my mind.

Like a holographic Princess Leia pleading for Obi Won Kenobi, the visage in my mind, was yelling at me, admonishing me to treat the boy like a baby and not a drinking buddy.

The wife’s image was powerful and compelling. I could have drunk it out of my mind if given the chance, but sadly, there is no beer aisle in KMART.

We continued our flight through a blur of toys and bikes and sporting goods. He was smiling effusively, flying effortlessly through a child’s most intense fantasy. Other children, seven and eight years of age stopped to look at my son in Awe. They were below us, everywhere, playing with games and toys on the shimmering linoleum.

Like so many homeless midgets, these children appeared to be fatherless, left alone in the toy department to entertain themselves. And here before them was a gargantuan dad, loud and forceful, throwing caution and his tiny delicate son to the wind. I could feel their emptiness as they stared up at us with those big, sad puppy dog eyes.

My son giggled like a mad man as we pressed on. We left the confines of toys and games and once again entered the world of household items. His thin hair was pasted against his scalp as a current of K-Mart air rushed around his head.

We orbited the store returning to the crowd of women and children waiting in line. As we moved closer to the wife, I noticed a house thermometer hanging on a rack. Eighty one degrees. No wonder I was sweating.

I pulled up next to the little woman. She was frothing at the mouth standing in a stagnant cess pool of baby drool. It was a K-Mart law suit waiting to happen. Children were wailing furiously, incessantly. Their mothers rocked and swayed back and forth trying to appease them.

Over this rumbling of noise and dissatisfaction was photo lady’s voice. “Smile for the birdie,” she said with all the love of a jail matron.

“Are we next?,” I asked innocently.

Bad moment to be the only pair of gonads in line. The aisle got cold and dark like vampires had descended from the rafters and drained eveyrone’s blood.

What did I say?

It was as if I had pulled off my son’s dirty diaper and wiped it on the walls. Women around me stared at me with brazen anger in their eyes. They waited for my wife to fill me in.

“No,” the wife said testily. “The line hasn’t moved at all. This woman doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

Unexpectedly, a woman with a large face pushed her way into my shopping space.

“I was here for two hours yesterday,” she lamented in a southern drawl so thick I thought she might have been from Afghanistan. “The regular man quit on us. Just up and quit. He had some sort of break down.” Her words were syrup like, and ran together. “They gave us a discounted coupon for today. This woman drove here all the way from Raleigh. Can you believe this?”

“What’s the hold up today?,” I asked.

“She’s posing all these other children in five and six different poses. First the cowboy hat, then the balloons. It’s too much. Taking too long. Doesn’t she realize we’re back here waiting?”

Obviously not, I thought to myself as I stared at the photo lady. She looked disorganized and uninterested. She was sloth like and generally repulsive. I imagined her terrible life as a recovering alcoholic, living in a one bedroom, cock roach infested apartment on the other side of th tracks in Raleigh. Globs of sweat were rolling down her hairy cheeks. This wasn’t a job to her. This was hell on Earth. She was struggling to maintain her sanity as she posed one puddle of flesh after another on the raised platform.

I felt a sprinkling of compassion for her. Who the hell would want a job photographing other people’s children all day long? Screaming. Crying. Tantrums. Smelly diapers. I felt a sudden urge to walk up there in her behalf and kick the nearest mother I could find squarely in the ass.

I chuckled to myself as I imagined capturing this classic freeze frame with her big box camera. My foot squarely planted in some big ever expanding spandex ass.

SMILE FOR THAT BIRDIE! Now that would be worth thirteen dollars I thought to myself.

My thoughts were interrupted by my wife’s impatient voice. “A.C., this sucks. I’m hot. I’m sweating. My back hurts from standing here. Even the kid is worn out.”

I looked down at the child. His eyes were securely shut. He was snoring discernibly over the background announcement of another incredible K-Mart shopping opportunity.

“It’s already been an hour, and this line hasn’t moved hardly at all. Now, he’s asleep. If we do have to wake him up, if we ever get there, he’s just going to be cranky.”

“Do you wanna go?,” I said quietly.

I felt the anticipation of those in line behind us begin to swell. Like sharks circling a bloody carcass, they inched closer, forcing our personal space to collapse upon itself.

The wife nodded affirmatively. With little fan fare we surrendered our space in line. The others behind us quickly shuffled forward closing the gap, as if we had never been there.

We moved to the front doors with an anger in our step. From over head another message blared out. “Welcome K-Mart shoppers. A whole new kind of store.”

I was pissed. We had waited in line for more than ninety minutes, and we were going home empty handed. The glass doors whooshed open. A broiling noxious wind assaulted our senses as we made our way into the hazy afternoon.

I eventually got that “official” kid photo. And now with digital photography, I think I have enough images of that kid to wall paper the Grand Canyon.

I guess KMART is still forcing hallucinegenic imagery into your skull while you shop for toasters and maybe you can still get photos in aisle three. I really don’t know.

As I listen to my co-workers, all I can think is; Good luck new parents.

As Princess Leia once said: “Help me Obi Won Kenobi. You’re our only hope”