The EDR Website.  Specifically, the section on our school visits. 

http://www.edrlamas.com/Sch-Nur-Homes.html

            I’m secretly afraid of ghosts, serial killers, and babies…definitely afraid of babies.  Before you start psychoanalyzing the list, let me say, I’m not afraid of all three in the same way.  Ghosts are scary because they represent death and the unknown.  Serial killers, in a similar fashion, represent death and dying.  Both, I suppose, play into my fear of not being in control.  On a standard list of “things people fear,” these two fall somewhere near the top, right up there with death and just below public speaking.  I fear babies for a completely different reason.  Not because, like the other things on my list, they can potentially hurt me; but rather, that it is so easy to hurt them.  In other words, I fear babies for the same reason I fear glass figurines: they just break too easily. 

            If you couldn’t guess, I’m not exactly what you would refer to as a “maternal character.”  Females, in this culture, are largely expected to “ooo” and “aww” over infants.  (This is very different from my “oh” and “uhhh….”)  They are expected to want to hold them – to pass “baby” from woman to woman until all are equally satiated by cuteness and covered in drool.  I think this is grossly unfair.

            Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely like children; I just happen to like them more when they’re old enough to support their own heads.  Give me a screaming two-year old who enjoys running around in circles, and I am perfectly capable of providing an entertaining atmosphere.  Infants, on the other hand, give me flashbacks to over-worried mothers in my childhood.  *Fuzzy regression into a sitcom memory*  They ask if I want to hold their babies and then hover around jumping at every noise made within a fifty mile radius.  I’m not saying they were doing the wrong thing in worrying, but that, if they were so uncomfortable with a child holding their baby, they shouldn’t have let them.  (Incidentally, I think I’d be pretty nervous with a five year old holding a new-born too.  Given a five year old’s general attention span and usual habit of dropping things, it’s rather an issue of tempting fate.) 

            Those mothers are probably only one of many factors contributing to my baby avoiding nature.  I have other theories as well.

            First, I think that there may be a genetic factor to this maternal instinct, and, if so, my older sister exhausted the gene pool before I got there.  Despite the fact that we have photographic evidence of her sitting on top of an infant (namely me) when just a toddler herself, she has managed to grow into a full-fledged baby person.  Babies instinctively love her, and she, instinctively, knows just how to take care of them. 

            This tendency could be seen in its early stages when we were kids.  The toys we preferred might have given an attentive adult a clue into our developing personalities.  My sister, from the time she started playing with toys until the time she stopped, preferred dolls.  She played house and took care of babies that didn’t actually need to be taken care of.  She could be found pushing her “babies” in strollers, or dressing them, or feeding them.  It was an established pattern.  (She also dressed up the cat and pushed her around in strollers…but that’s another story entirely.)

            My sister’s favorite doll was a baby named, cleverly, “Baby feel so real.”  (She, of course, didn’t call it that, but I don’t remember what name she gave it; also, there may have been several.)  It, as you might guess from the name, looked and felt more like a real baby than your average cabbage patch kid.  For one thing, it was made entirely of the same material.  No plastic head and fabric body on this one.  Also, this doll had a sort of pseudo-skeletal structure, making it both more realistic looking and ridiculously heavy.  I remember being intrigued by the doll, but as it was my sister’s favorite, I seldom played with it.  She was afraid I would drop it (something I’m sure I did on more than one occasion) or that I would hold it wrong (something I regularly did with all of my dolls, and which, incidentally, shouldn’t matter that much as they weren’t real babies). 

            My dolls weren’t like baby feel so real.  My dolls usually looked more like princesses than babies and, regardless of what they looked like, almost always required batteries.  My sister was content in taking care of the babies that looked like babies and did nothing.  I wasn’t.  I wanted my dolls to light up, sing songs, or, at the very least, actually crap their pants.  In other words, my dolls were the action figures of the doll world.  Usually I decided that my dolls had magical powers: while my sister’s babies were crying, mine were flying around the room (expertly assisted by myself).  The exceptions to that were the babies that wet/crapped their pants…that particular power is really only fun for so long.  

            In truth, I wasn’t really the biggest fan of dolls to begin with.  I far and away preferred toy figurines and Barbie dolls.  With each of those types of toys I could rule kingdoms, and, rather than be myself taking care of a baby, I could be something else entirely.  (I went through a phase when my figurines of choice were the California Raisins…which means that I spent a portion of my youth pretending to be a dried grape: I try not to think about it.)  My Barbies and figurines were fodder for adventure.  Usually I would pretend to go on some sort of epic quest.  (Basic plot line: a “bad guy” - or evil stepmother, depending on what Disney movie I had most recently viewed - was after me, I had to run away to “a far away kingdom,” and I usually took a lot of pets with me. (Sometimes they could talk; it depended on my mood.)  In the end, I would triumph and save the kingdom/world/day.  I was pretty much Frodo Baggins.  It was awesome.  Eventually I discovered that boys' toys were pre-made for this type of thing.  I became a huge fan of X-Men and Power Rangers.  I developed a huge crush on the Green/White Ranger - I think his name was Tommy - and played with Zords.) 

            This brings me back to my original point (actually it doesn’t – but I’ll get there.)  I grew up appreciating action over nurturance.  My sister has loved babies her entire life.  Now she works in a day care.  I grew up fascinated with myth, and I study English.  I have, however, completely lost all interest in raisins…