Babies, Slugs, & the Eternal You

Babies are so funny! Take the one sitting 2 tables away from me at Starbucks right now. First of all, she's dressed adorably with a teeny tiny denim skirt and pink ruffly headband to match her pink shirt and booties. Second of all, she's gnawing and licking the shit out of her fingers, like a caveman with a big juicy hambone. Sometimes though, her hand comes out of her toothless mouth and falls into her lap (slobber and all), but rather than lifting her hand back up, she leans her whole teeny tiny head and torso over and tries to grab the lifeless hand with her mouth. Sometimes she misses. Once she leaned over aiming for her hand, but she landed on her mother's knee instead, so she just started licking her mother's knee, while her mother held onto the back of the baby's skirt to keep her from falling. Crazy babies! They make me laugh.

Also, they will eat anything. There once was a baby named Ziyanja who lived downstairs from us at our old apartment. One day, we were changing her diaper and amidst the pile of poop lay two shiny-no-more quarters. Poor Washington. It's despicable the way we desecrate our founding fathers! I wonder what disgusting things I ate as a baby? Cal, a classmate of mine in elementary school, ate a slug when he was two. That is so gross. Why do slugs turn orange when you salt them? Hm...when you salt the slug, its body secretes slime to the outside in order to dilute the salt so it can breathe. So when you salt a slug to death, you're forcing it to secrete all the liquid from its body, and basically drying or suffocating it to death. Ok, I'm feeling slightly nauseous now. I really hope no one was eating while reading this post.

Yesterday, I met up with some friends I had not seen in 6 years. !!! We haven't changed a bit. I kid or course, but only slightly. I think, judging from last night's experience, there is a part of us that remains eternally the same no matter how much we change in other respects. Like the exuberance of one, or the genuineness of another. Our database of things we've seen and done and learned has grown exponentially, but the template on which these things were laid remains unchanged, ever since we were the size of that Ferocious Licker babe...who is now gone. Boo. I guess I'll entertain myself with a book now. I'm currently reading Oh Jerusalem, by Lapierre and Collins. It was donated to me by Tom, who urged me to read it before I head to the mideast. So many things to do, so little time!

Eternally Yours,

Archimedes