My Worst Fear

I remember the day well; it was a cool sunny day, or maybe it was a cool snowy day, or was it just cloudy. Okay, so I don’t remember the weather on the day well at all but the weather is completely irrelevant to the occurrence that fated day; I still remember the day fairly well, it was a Friday, or was it a Saturday. I guess the day is even irrelevant to someone who does not have places to be or things to do in the outside world. Let’s just move on into the story now.

The day started like every other day during the past three weeks, except that this day was a Friday (I am really sure of it too I am not just making this up). My eight-month-old son forced me to wake up early to get him out of his crib and his wet diaper, and give him some nourishment. Once the feeding finished and baby my son was satisfied, I sat him in his bouncer in front of the television, which was tuned to children’s programming, and I continued on my usual routine.

This day I had to make bottles for him, as I do every other day, so I hid in the kitchen and began that slow boring process (luckily I was able to prepare the water before feeding so I just had to sterilize the bottles and mix the formula). As I continued the mind-numbing task, having my mind drift aimlessly through random thought after random thought, I began to hear noises from the other room. It took me some time to recognize the noise but I finally realized that my son was giggling so much I would swear he was actually laughing. I found this quite odd because he has never laughed like that before at the television. In fact, he rarely giggles much at the television period.

I continued making bottles expecting the ‘laughter’ to stop but to my surprise, the laughter continued. As a concerned parent, I decided I needed to find out the cause of the laughter so I stopped making bottles and went to investigate. As I got closer to the television, an unmistakable voice attacked my ears. I didn’t want to admit the voice indeed belonged to the character I despised but once I turned the corner, the dread enveloped me. My first instinct was to reach for the remote and change the channel but decided I could not deprive my child of the enjoyment he seemed to be getting from the show so I left the channel alone.

For the first eight months of my child’s life I was able to shield him from the idiosyncrasies of the big purple dinosaur and his so called friends but one day after he reached the eight month plateau, my hard work was wasted. My child has been exposed to Barney and, for some incomprehensible reason he actually really likes him. He doesn’t like the show because when Barney is not in view, no giggles can be heard but once Barney pops into view, my son just can’t stop giggling. I guess this is not really a bad thing though because hearing a baby’s laughter is probably the best sound one can hear, it sure beats crying and screaming anyhow.