Saturday, December 24, 2005

the kind of christmas eve that makes you want to shoot a certain someone in the balls

Say you are at a Christmas Eve party, and a guy offers another person's baby, a twenty-two-month old, a sip of vodka. Then, just for a lark, say you tell the mother of this baby about it, and she says, "Well, I give him beer sometimes, but that's only like 5% alcohol. Was it a mixed drink? Or straight vodka?" Say she asks you this LIKE IT MATTERS. Now I'm not the sort of person that thinks it's funny when you blow marijuana smoke into a cat's ears, but I'm definitely not the sort of person who thinks it's funny to get a baby, a vulnerable, completely dependent baby, to drink alcohol.

We drove home last night from this situation and we turned around to see Ben sleeping peacefully in his carseat. We said, "Ben is so lucky he has us." But then I thought about this, and I realized that Ben is not at all lucky he has us. Every baby should have at least one parent who loves them and gives them everything they can and protects them from the ills of the world. This is not luck; it is what should be. And the sad thing is, so many babies don't have this, and you imagine these babies becoming adults and you know the odds are against them, and you close your eyes and you pray that they beat them.

P.S. I don't care who reads this.

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