My brothers and sister all had children. I viewed these warily and they saw me as an opportunity. “Let’s aim all of our evolutionarily honed techniques at Uncle Nigel and make him feed/play with us. Their parents are in league with them. “Oh, look at her, Nigel. She just wants you to hold her. How selfish can you be?”
“Massively, thank you.”
But I am human, prey to social influences, sensitive to public criticism and aware that conformity is an escape hatch. I pick the child up, sit down and put it down on my thighs. I look at it. It’s not smiling or being cute any more. It’s just too close. Its genetically encoded radar reads the arrangement of my facial features and fails to find the code for undying love. It realises that I am not holding it properly. It notices that it feels uncomfortable. It wriggles. I sense that I should hold it differently. I put my arms under it. It flattens like a board. Its eyes squish shut and the skin around them pulses and puckers like a mud bubble in a volcanic swamp. The lower lip curls forward. The child sucks in a deep breath.
This is the time for decisive action. I stand up and swing the child around. It is so surprised that it delays its howl in order to assess sensory input for threats to survival. Before it recovers its initial whining potential, I shove it back at its parent and retreat to the kitchen where I can be found with my head in the fridge. If asked, I am getting drinks for people.
My siblings’ children have spawned the next generation, making me a great uncle several times over. I now live on the other side of the world from my family. It’s easier than having to hold children. However, going back to Australia to visit the rellies is occasionally unavoidable. My wife comes with me and witnesses the fertility evident in my family genome. She looks at tiny, squalling things that share a certain percentage of my genes. Neurochemical physiology runs its course and releases hormones into key areas of her brain. She goes all mushy. She picks up the little bundles of gene expression and interprets their encoded responses to her as conscious and loving.
Her pituitary increases secretion to maximum levels. Hormones pour into her wannababy cortex. Others flood her pair-bond centres. A little man in her hypothalamus picks up a microphone and yells, “Cap’n! She’ll nae take it!” But her thoughts power ahead at warp factor 5. The two courses of neural impulses collide in one glorious notion. She hands the baby to me.
I tense. The baby goes rigid. I assess the seismological signs and register the danger. I fling the child back into her arms and have my head in the fridge next door before she has registered my absence. I’m in the clear. Her entire being is engaged in the struggle to find a course of action to stop my tiny relative from screeching.
I twist the tops off a couple of a couple of beers and sneak out into the backyard son with my nephew, the relieved Dad. Thanks, honey. The baby’s yours for now. We sigh as the lager exerts its late afternoon placebo effect.
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