It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby: Just repeat it to yourself and listen to what you’re saying.
Really? That easy? So…that makes it…OK?
The first time I heard it -- this idea that taking candy from a baby (such as myself) was somehow easy or simple, or perhaps without consequence -- I was horrified. It was so mean-spirited, so cruel. But then – well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’m about ten months old now, and most afternoons the au pair takes me to the park and gives me a lollipop to keep me quiet while she gabs on her phone. If Mommy knew the au pair was giving me a lollipop she’d go batshit (which I’m not allowed to say for reasons I don’t get), but she doesn’t – she just gives me to the au pair in the morning and disappears. “Mommy’s going to go make law,” she says, and then I don’t see her until she comes home with cartons of take-out at suppertime.
I like lollipops, except the red ones, which taste like Tylenol. But one day, I’m in the stroller and these two older boys, seven or eight years old I’d guess, come over and give me a little of the koochie-koo thing under my neck, and while the au pair is on the phone and not watching, one of them suddenly lunges and grabs my lollipop! The two of them take off, laughing and shouting, taking turns licking it, and one of them says to the other, “See? I told you it was easy! As easy as taking candy from a baby!”
What? Taking candy from a baby, really? Is that a thing? Is it supposed to be OK because it’s easy? Why not just put a sign on my back that says, “take candy away from this little bitch, no problem.” So, I was sitting there, confused and a little devastated, when suddenly another kid stoops down next to me, and before I can flinch, he says “Hey! I feel you, brother.”
The kid is about the same age as those other boys, but he seems much nicer and he’s got this flaming red hair. “I know what you’re going through,” he says. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘beaten like a red-headed step-child?’”
Well, no I hadn’t, but I was appalled! Was it really OK to beat red-headed step-kids, like it was OK to steal candy from babies? I wanted to ask, but I can’t talk yet. Still, the red-headed kid seemed to understand what I was thinking and whispered to me, “Your au pair is gabbing on the phone. Come with me, she won’t notice,” and before I knew it, he was wheeling me away.
In a very short while the red-headed kid had wheeled me away to some kind of a small shed – a clubhouse really – with a bunch of folks inside. “Hey people, here’s the candy baby,” he announced, and there were smiles and warm welcomes for me from everyone there – it seemed they had expected me!
“We’re delighted to ha’ you with us, li’l’ fella,” said a fellow in a pea coat and a little white hat, whose speech was slurred like Daddy’s is when he has too much “booze.”
“Candy Baby, allow me to introduce the drunken sailor,” the red-headed kid said.
“An’ I can ma’age my money jus’ fine!” the sailor exclaimed, then shook his head to clear it.
“Where am I?” he said, then burped loudly. “Drinks are on me!”
“Pardon our friend,” said a fellow with a broad smile whom Fate had deprived of one of his arms and was holding a pot of glue with the other. He wore a painter’s hat and had a large brush tucked into his apron.
“And this is the one-armed paperhanger,” the red-headed kid said by way of introduction. “How’s it going, Mel?”
“Not too busy,” the one-armed paperhanger said with a pleasant smile. “Have you met Clarence yet?”
I looked around to see who “Clarence” might be, when I noticed the head of a fish poking out of a barrel. “I’m Clarence,” said the fish.
“He’s the fish in a barrel,” the red-headed kid said, although he was sort of grown-up-splaining, if you ask me.
“And I feel for you, kid,” the fish in the barrel said, “but frankly, if I had some candy, I’d give it to whomever wanted it if they would just stop shooting at me.”
The fish had a troubled expression you don’t see often in a fish. “Before they put me in this barrel, I was the fish out of water. Man, that was a drag! You know, a person’s uncomfortable somewhere and they say they’re a ‘fish out of water.’ And it’s supposed to be like oh! that explains it -- it’s OK that they’re uncomfortable, because there’s an explanation, so you don’t have to do anything about it. No one ever asks how they got out of water, or how to get them back into the water. Now, in my case, one day some guy came along, picked me up, and splash, he throws me into a barrel. Sweet relief!, I thought, finally! But then, bang bang bang, and it struck me -- as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
“My first concern was for my safety, of course, but then I realized-- how stupid is this? First, shooting a fish in a barrel isn’t that easy, unless you’re short-rodding with a Winchester, but otherwise, the fish swims around in the barrel, and if it’s the standard 42 gallon barrel, and if it’s not a very big fish, like a spot or a crappie or a bluegill, then it might be harder than…well, harder than stealing candy from a baby,” he said, nodding to me sympathetically. “And not only is shooting fish in a barrel not that easy, but it ruins the barrel, shoots the damn thing full of holes. I suppose the people who were shooting fish in a barrel saw the light and started taking candy from babies instead.”
The assemblage nodded in agreement and a woman stepped forward to introduce herself. She wore a long, tattered black dress with black shoes, her hair was an unkempt mess of black and gray, and she was decidedly unattractive, with a green tint to her complexion, and a variety of wart-like growths on her face. “So, dearie, do you think I’m ugly?” she asked me.
What a question! I was glad I don’t know how to talk! Luckily, the red-headed step-child interrupted. “Come on, now, Heloise,” he said. “He’s a baby! How’s he supposed to answer a question like that?”
The witch took the correction in stride. “Well, that’s what they all say – someone’s ugly as a witch, as if Joan of Arc of some of those Salem girls weren’t hotties!”
“Yeah, but they weren’t really witches, were they?” Mel, the one-armed paperhanger noted.
He had a point, but it didn’t slow the witch down. “Well…no matter. Because no sooner did they start in talking about how witches were ugly, it got worse -- cold as a witch’s tit! Frankly, when did my tits become a topic for public discussion, a point of thermal reference for the masses? And frankly, how do you know? It’s not like anybody’s checked my mammaries, or is ever going to, unless they want to go through life sitting on a lily pad and eating flies! Besides, every creature with breasts in all of Creation is a mammal, and they’re all warm-blooded, so you have to wonder where the idiots who say this stuff were during high school biology! Next thing you know they’ll be denying evolution.”
“Thank you, Heloise,” the red-headed step-child said as the witch sat down. “I now want turn to Oswald, who has a brief presentation I asked him to prepare.”
An ox waddled into the center of the room and spoke. “I appreciate our red-headed friend asking me to do this research,” the ox said. “Partly, of course, because of the dumb as an ox business, which every ox – and every farmer -- knows is simply used to justify putting a yoke on us and making us drag heavy stuff through paddies. It’s the same old stuff cruel people always fall back on – blame the victim. I’d like to see them try that on a carnivore,” the ox snorted contemptuously, then put on a pair of reading glasses and extracted some notes.
“There’s this thing on the Internet called Google N-grams – they tell you how often words are used in English-language published works. So, for example, it will tell you how often the words ‘taking candy from a baby’ appear,” he said, looking at me quite pointedly. “And by 2011, the expression ‘taking candy from a baby’ had become four times more frequent in written English than it had been in 1985, just a quarter of a century before. The same for ‘fish in a barrel,’ too, four times more frequent,” the ox said, shaking his massive head as he took off his glasses and put his papers down.
“There is a societal outbreak around us, an outbreak of meanness, of cruelty, of callousness." thje ox said. "And it victimizes all of us – not just the candy-less babies, the fish in barrels, the red-headed step-children, but the people who reduce themselves by using these expressions, as if they have no faults of their own. People don’t respect other people any longer – they just laugh at their fellow creatures as they try to feel better about themselves. It’s part and parcel of a more unequal, devil-take-the-hindmost society. We treat things – wealth, investments, possessions – better than a beating heart.” The ox stopped and ran his foreleg and hoof under a sniffly nose – he was close to tears. The red-headed step-child consoled him with a gentle pat on his hump, but the ox was upset. “Where does it stop?” the ox cried unhappily. “When do we start treating each other with dignity and respect?”
There was a round of silent nodding in response to the ox’s plaintive complaint, when the red-headed step-child told me he needed to get me back before I was missed, so we made our apologies and he rolled me back to where the au pair was sitting, still gabbing on her phone. He whispered to me he’d be checking up on me and not to worry, and just like that, he disappeared.
I felt happy I’d made some friends, but more importantly, now I knew when other people were mean, the target of their malice – whether me, or the witch, or the ox, or the paperhanger – didn’t merit the callousness with which they were treated. It was a liberating revelation. But at the same time, I was unhappy folks like the step-child or the witch or the fish had to go through life that way. I wouldn’t be a baby for very long. But they would be as they were forever.
As I thought about it, sitting in my stroller, I guess I started making that face babies make. You know the one I mean – our eyes open up wide and get moist but no tears run, our nostrils flare wider than you thought they could, our lips turn from pink to purple and start to quiver, and we generally look like it’s about to be a bad day in Pompeii. Suddenly the au pair notices me and gets all attentive. “Look at you!” she says. “Is something wrong? Would you like some milk?” And she takes out a sippy cup filled with milk and hands it to me. I regarded it for a moment and then an inspiration hit me, and I threw it down on the ground.
“Now look what you’ve done!” the au pair said exasperatedly.
I looked down at the spilled milk and was about to cry over it, when I had a change of heart. Don’t cry over the spilled milk, I told myself! Don’t play into their hands! Don’t give them the satisfaction!
So I proceeded, instead, to take the loudest, smelliest, messiest poop I had ever taken. “Oh, Jesus!” the au pair shouted, and put away her phone to start wheeling me home for a diaper change. “I can’t believe the mess you’ve made!” she bleated.
I smiled discreetly as she did. If you want to change the world, you start with the weapons you have.
