Click Click Click

I would tell you about my actual birth, but I really don't remember much. I guess there was a light and then it's pretty much all a blur. As a young'n I had always been shy about being nude in front of family members, so that was embarassing, I guess. Really, I can only guess about what was going through my young mind at that moment. I imagine that the doctor who circumcized me was the first person on my newly formed shitlist; but again, I'm just guessing.

Fortunately, I have five older siblings to remind me of a great many details relating to my early days on this earth. As the youngest and, given the advanced ages of my parents, presumably the last chance for my family to attain some level of infant greatness, I had quite a load to carry - and not just in my diapers. The baby born before me - let's call him "Aldo", though no one in my family would ever be called "Aldo" because we're just not that ethnic - had been trained by our four older siblings to walk and talk by the age of seven months. That could be argued to be some kind of great accomplishment for a baby, but then he got older and quickly fizzled everyone's expectations by becoming what I refer to as a "naco". So, I was the one on whom their hopes rested. Sadly.

Again, I don't remember this so well, but I am pretty sure that I was feeling quite a bit of babystress as I was taken through my daily infantolympic workouts. Five crazy siblings and two nutball parents were yaking at me in all directions, all day, day and night to get me to talk. Though I suspect that Aldo didn't want his eight-year record broken by some new punk-ass baby. It was enough that I was cuter than him, I don't think he could stand for me walking and talking faster than he did. Anyway, I had inadvertantly given my brothers and sisters a hugely false sense of my genius by uttering the word "click" several times after just one week at home. That's right. I said "click" when I was just one week old. Not the Swahili kind of click, the actual word "click". C - L - I - C - K, though I'm pretty sure I didn't know how to spell it.

I know. You don't believe it. I don't care. I was the baby genius making a voiceless velar plosive followed by an alveolar lateral approximant - which is quite a tricky feat for an infink - and you're just too amazed to accept it.

So, of course Aldo didn't hear it and to this day doesn't accept it. He says I said some crap like "Da Da" when I was - conveniently - eight months old.

MESSAGE TO ALDO: I know I said it. Everyone else knows I said it. You know I said it. I know you know you know.