a bit of information about the class, first: all the other babies are huge -- plump and full, succulent and thick, a little burly boisterous lot -- except for our son. who, by the way is slender or svelte as described through a language a little more elegant and less disheartening than that commonly heard in pediatric parlance as represented and (suspiciously) inspired by the growth charts that come along with the free baby book sponsored by infant formula and baby food companies through which rio has been categorized as "slightly stunted and wasting away".
rio is underweight. slow to gain pounds. as in, further down the chart (not within, just to be clear; charting its own point independent of the graph in the growth chart page). and just so we could dispel any impression that we are in denial, the mother and i are well aware and conscious of this fact and have been feeding him "fat", a step among other things to make him catch up and climb, at least, to the 5th percentile.
so, back to the kid (a boy) who visited the babies on a stormy morning. this story is about him basically. but also, primarily, perhaps a story about "normality".
back to the kid. and to cut to the chase: when he saw rio (who was his usual self: interested and incredulous at the same time, showcasing his sparse eyebrows knit together at the inner corners of the eyes), he curiously asked: why does this baby (rio) look like a fetus? ngyay!
of course, this little scenario is just a retelling of a retelling of what occurred that time. and on this i would like to quote mitch (wink). but now i tell you, had i been the one who witnessed the sequence of events, the next step i would've taken was to deliver a much deserved repartee that goes something like: perhaps a fetus, admittedly so, but at least, here I cite St. Augustine, a fetus animatus -- endowed with a soul.
he might've bantered with me a bit more, there's no way of knowing. but the point here is plain and simple: rio has got a massive skull.
the other point is, early on in our lives, we are trained to see and believe only in what is "normal" as though the definition of normal is immutable, absolute and neutral. i do not blame the kid if his idea of a baby follows the popular representation of babies being beefy, or porky or podgy. certain businesses promote this image through mass media. stories abound of mothers who'd rather feed their infants formula milk though there is the availability of breastmilk because they want their babies to achieve this certain "look".
this story is therefore, also about "ideology" as false consciousness. false. consciousness. no massive skull needed to comprehend that one.
[though to me, rio looks more like a martian (^^) ]
