Babies - The Free Ride Has Gone On Long Enough

The life of a baby is, overall, pretty great as far as I can tell. People make your food, they feed it to you, they carry or cart you around from place to place, they bathe you while you play with toys and splash them in the face, they dress you, buy you lots of toys to keep you entertained... you get all of this, and what's more? You're not even expected to show the smallest amount of gratitude. No baby's first words have ever been "thank you," and they never will be. Why? For the same reason you don't go outside every morning and thank the garbage man: he's just doing his job. My point? Babies have it good.

Well then, you say, what's all the whining and crying about? Okay, to be fair, there's another way of looking at it. You have to eat whatever your parents decide to feed you, you have to go wherever they want to go and play with their friends' stupid babies that pull your hair (and never get in trouble for it,) you have to get in the bathtub whether you like it or not and during more than one bath will undoubtedly have humiliating and socially compromising pictures taken which will quite possibly at some point be lost in the basement but will almost definitely turn up by the time your prom date is waiting for you in the living room sixteen years later, you have to play with all those stupid overly complicated, light-up, noisy toys they buy you, when all you really want to play with is measuring cups and Tupperware... I suppose it might be rough sometimes, but it beats working a shit job and being suffocated by debt, responsibility, and the conscience for social niceties. I mean, come on! You don't even have to pay taxes!

Alright adults, before you get all worked up and start making your picket signs demanding equal rights for every age group, I want you to put down your poster board and markers and remember this: we are the enablers. As with many of today's major problems and epidemics, it all starts at home. We've all been micromanaging these drooling little leaches for way too long in this country. And the result? Infantile laziness. Did you know in many areas of China most people have a job by the time they're six months old? It's true. Let me tell you, those kids appreciate a bottle of milk. Ya know why? Because they bought it with their own money. It's called "self-reliance," all you American babies. Look it up. Oh that's right- you can't read yet, can you? Well who's fault is that? Most babies in India learn to read in the womb and many have even published several works of their own before birth.

All I'm saying is, maybe I'd be a little further up my career ladder now if I had been instilled with the kind of solid work ethic that you can only learn from sewing khaki pants for the Gap when you're three. It's time these babies started pulling their weight. Change is in the air! I can smell it! Ummmmm... or maybe that's a dirty diaper.