growing baby

Mateo says exactly one word in English. He’s got a few words in Spanish, and I’m working on that Russian one. He’s certainly got enough understanding in those languages to follow some pretty complex multi-step commands.

His word in English is pretty straightforward.

It’s “baby”.

But, due to some lack of foresight, an accident of history, and repetition by his parents, this word does not mean what you may think.

No, my friends.

Baby, you see, means “computer”. Any computer will do — desktop, laptop, turned off, turned on.

And it is a nice, high-quality word. Most other things he says in a typical baby fashion, using only one syllable when there are really many (for example “lota” instead of “pelota”) or using an onomatopoeic word like “pshh-pssh” to mean a microwave oven (for the beep it makes when food is done). But not “baby” — that is a one hundred percent, fully verifiable, perfectly intelligible, definitely applicable vocalization.

The etymology of the word is fairly simple. Since Mateo was little, I’ve had him bang on a computer keyboard, sitting in front of this program that takes over the computer, displays a blank screen, and whenever a key is pressed makes a noise and displays a shape. Mateo loved it. The program, is called BabySmash. So we used this name, and at some point — notably after Larissa had a couple of hours with Mateo — the name stuck.

Except for Mateo doesn’t really need the program to be there to use the general name “baby”. He just needs a shape of a computer. Just like he can recognize his “pssh-pssh” anywhere he goes, even if the microwave oven doesn’t look at all like ours, same with computers. He sees these babies everywhere, from TV stores to friends’ houses. He knows enough to reach to wiggle the mouse or try to press something on a keyboard if he can reach over the edge.

And the little man is insistent. He can go around and around us working, asking and pleading for access to his baby.

So the other day, we gave him a baby.

It’s a rather sad little baby, a computer whose lifeforce has been extinguished many years ago. It’s a very frail thing, really only able to survive when plugged into power — thus limiting its use while under supervision. It has no chance of running BabySmash (or even starting an operating system).

It’s not always there, since the unreasonable baby-hogging parents control when he can visit with his baby, but he has it, and it’s his, and he can press all the buttons in the world and abuse it as he wishes — it will even make (protest) noises from time to time, as he hits the wrong keys.

But Mateo is happy. He’s got a baby of his own.