There's a Hair in My Mole

So the other day I was out with my sister and she asked me to stick her baby in his car seat. I immediately realized that she must be pulling a trick on me and was waiting to hear her exclaim, “April Fool!” even though it was still March, but she didn’t. No matter how many minutes I sweated and struggled to figure out the mind-bending puzzle that I now know as the car seat buckle, I couldn’t figure it out. I don’t know about you, but the last time I buckled something it consisted of two parts, not four. Back in the day when I’d put my own kids in their car seats, my biggest challenge was trying to get them in without buckling a piece of their inner thigh and before they kicked me square in the face or ripped a handful of hair out of my head or both.

But in addition to the buckle that should come with a label reading “minimum SAT score of 700 in mathematical reasoning required,” my nephew presents additional challenges as he’s a gargantuan baby and his parents insist on keeping him extra safe by making the straps so tight that I worry his little baby balls might crawl back up into his abdomen. Anyway I knew I had met my match: I’m not ashamed to say I bombed the math section of the SAT (well, not just the math) and I don’t want to be blamed for crushing anyone’s nuts, so I threw up my hands and told my sister to do it herself.

My kids have been out of car seats for quite some time, and even though Bianca didn’t meet the weight requirements to sit in a regular seat until midway through junior high, nothing screams NERD quite as loudly as jumping out of your booster seat in front of the mean girls and cute guys at drop off. Lucky for her I’m not so big on obeying the law.

So it’s a good thing that my kids are past the car-seat stage, what with my poor buckling skills, my resistance to obeying laws, and now this: the recent “government recommendation” that babies remain in rear-facing car seats until the age of two.  I would have had a real problem if that had been “recommended” back in the day because despite the fact that Bianca was tiny and light as a feather, she did, and still does, have a pair of functioning legs, as do Miles and Charles. For those less fortunate kids who don’t have legs below the knees, or the precocious tots who have already perfected the half lotus yoga position (that’s the one we used to call “uncomfortable Indian style” before it was considered politically incorrect), it might be feasible to keep them seated that way, but what about the rest?  Will mothers have to teach their babies to tuck their knees up their noses?  While they’re at it, why doesn’t the government recommend that everyone sit facing the rear, and manufacture cars to accommodate?  If it’s good enough for baby, it’s good enough for all, right?  In the meantime, I’m considering driving everywhere in reverse, just to be extra safe.  The only real problem I foresee could be at toll booths, as things are always a little chaotic there even when you are driving forwards, because there are still too many people that don’t have an EZPass, which irritates me even more than Kathie Lee Gifford does.

While I’m on the topic of government recommendations, have you noticed how really useful they are? Like the new nutritional guidelines, for instance. After revamping the ever helpful Food Pyramid, which states that we should eat about a thousand portions of fruit and veggies each day, the FDA is now suggesting that we all just “eat less.” HA! And how about all the fussing over mammograms? With a new “study” coming out every other week, keeping track of how often we should or shouldn’t be getting a mammo has become as time consuming as a part-time job, and one needs an advanced degree in statistics to keep it all straight. All this for the pleasure of having my A-cup flattened to the size of a large dinner plate.  I’m convinced that marine biologists are the only ones who really know what kinds of fish the government recommends we should and shouldn’t eat, unless maybe you are a fisherman and have some knowledge of what fishes are bottom feeders and what a bottom feeder does because that just doesn’t sound appetizing at all. And god help you if you are pregnant, you’d better be a marine biologist married to  a farmer so you can figure out what kind of cheeses the FDA says are dangerous to consume, whether that imported Brie is pasteurized enough and if a semi-soft Manchego is going to cause your baby to be born with midget legs.

Which could actually work out well for the car seat.