HUMOR
I’m Your Newborn Baby: Let Me Clean Myself Up Before You Share Me with the World
Listen Mom and Dad, I know you’re excited that I’m alive, but give me a minute to compose myself.
Waaahh!!! Why’d you bring me outside!? It’s freezing out here! Yuck! I’m covered in blood and human goo. Woah! What are you doing with those scissors next to my life support belly tube!? Don’t cut that! How will I survive!? Oh my God, you cut it. Surely, I’ll be dead in seconds.
Wait. Who’s this dude snapping photos of me? Listen Mom and Dad, I want to remember this moment too, but can we agree these photos stay between just the three of us? I mean, I look like a mutant alien puppet from a low budget sci-fi movie right now. I just began and mastered open air breathing about 10 seconds ago, and I’m clearly not camera ready yet. Let me clean myself up before you start showing me off to the world.
You can’t help it though, can you? You snapped that picture of me freshly coming out of the mortal gate of life and immediately thought, we need to share this thing we made with everyone, immediately. So you shared that first untouched, unflattering image of me with your family, your close friends, and if you’re a true psycho, everyone you’re friends with on Facebook and Instagram.
Do you even know who your friends with on Facebook still? Sure, it’s fantastic that your third cousin will get to see the image of me screaming a curse upon you for bringing me into this vapid world, but so will that old coworker who used to corner you in the break room to talk about his pet snakes.
Now most of the people that comment on this photo will write nice things like, “So BEAUTIFUL!!!” but they are lying through their teeth and deep down you know they’re not being truthful too. A few may even have the gall to write things like, “They look JUST like you!” These folks either have a rare disease called face blindness, or they’re screwing with you. You can’t even see my face in the photo you posted. My face is covered up by the Dr.’s bloody hands, and masked by my facial expression that exudes the loudest screaming my tiny new lungs can muster.
Listen, I know I’m a big deal to you, but you’re going to be able to take photos of me for the rest of your life; too many photos if I’m being honest. If you’re still unsure, a good rule of thumb of when it’s acceptable to get a shareable picture of me is any time after the ceremonial hospital beanie is officially placed atop my head. I call it the “Beanie Bylaw.” The donning of the beanie is a rite of passage, akin to how a hipster is officially accepted into the Pacific Northwest. I too use a ceremonial beanie as an indication of starting a new chapter of my life.
Heck, you can even bless me with an Instagram filter right away to really glam me up before releasing me out to the public. In fact, feel free to treat that first photo of me that you release into the world like an influencer treats a photo of themselves “protesting” for a cause. Put me in some cute clothes, check your angle and lighting, and caption it with a seemingly powerful, but generic and unoffensive message like, “Truly, people are humans.”
So thanks in advance for letting me deal with the world for a minute before exposing me to everyone. I appreciate it, and so will everyone else.
