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Perhaps I'm missing the Parent Gene.
Or maybe the part of my brain that interprets abstraction was damaged during my formative years from Pop Rocks and soda. I can't say.
All I know is that I lack the ability to discern the outline of a human in a blurry sonogram image (even if you trace it for me) and I completely fail to see beauty in some newborn babies.
Of course I'm polite about it. I mean, I'd never say, "I don't see it," or "Gee, what's wrong with his head?"
After gaping in horror at my own baby picture, however, I'm convinced my parents saw something I didn't.
Or, you know. I was just an ugly baby. And they kept me anyway…
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Deft diplomacy:
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So your friend shows you a picture of her unborn child's sonogram, and you compliment the baby's cuteness, only to be admonished by her with "a look" as she rotates the image 180 degrees.
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You just can't fake your way through that. Even if you're well-intentioned.
"See. There's the heart. There's his little fingers. And that's his little..."
Oy.
It all just looks like a blob to me. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Maybe it's like one of those Rorschach images and I'm just not seeing the girls dancing, or the four-legged animals.
Or the cloud. Or the bat. And definitely not the genitals. I can't even discern genitals in a sonogram, let alone "finding the penis" in some line art designed by a shrink. (And I don't even want to know what that really says about me.)
I don't suppose then, I'd be any good at interpreting abstract art either. Sure, I'm imaginative enough to tell you what I see. I'm just not so sure I'd be able to tell you what I'm looking at with any degree of accuracy.
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"It is important to see this blot as two human figures usually females or clowns. If you don't, it's seen as a sign that you have trouble relating to people." Read more here.
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And Ugly is in the hands of the doctor with the forceps.
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Maybe it was from the forceps. Maybe a neo-natal nurse dropped me. Or squeezed my head...like a zit. I've seen at least a half-dozen friends go through pregnancy and I've seen dozens more show up at work weeks after delivery with the cutest bundles of joy.
So what the hell happened to me? I looked like the spawn of a Sleestak. Perhaps my mother spent her 31st year in The Land of The Lost. Maybe my mother was a Sleestak?!
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If I'm ever approached by someone claiming to be a childhood friend with the name Cha-Ka, I'm going to be doing a serious paternity investigation.
My point is, to a parent, their child is the essence of beauty. He represents virtue, and all that is good and pure.
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With this in mind, I wonder if any parent of an ugly baby has or entertains that creeping thought that their offspring is, well, unattractive? And I don't mean those suffering from birth defects, a cleft palate or even that infant form of acne.
You'd never hear this exchange in public:
Dad: "You know, honey, our baby is really cute."
Mom: "Everything...but her face, that is."
Dad: "Maybe she'll grow out of it."
Mom: "Let's hope so. She won't be getting to the Prom with that mishapen head."
Of course not. That degree of cruelty is reserved only for evil relatives, schoolyard children and stand-up comedians.
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Bizarre coincidence, or a possible explanation for my strange affinity with extra-terrestrial life forms?
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So, I guess proper manners demands we politely lie to the parents whose newborns look like they've suffered some type of blunt force trauma, but I wonder what the parents really feel and if they admit those feelings, if only to themselves.
I was born with a small, faint birthmark on my chin. My first few months of life were "marked" by visits from friends and relatives who, upon seeing the blemish, would scratch and rub at the peculiar spot like it was some schmutz that some spit and elbow grease could remove. It's amazing I don't have a scar overlaying the birthmark.
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So some babies are born ugly. So what? Time may change that. Maybe that adversity makes a person work harder to improve themself. Or maybe it is the source of deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy.
Who knows? I just know an ugly baby when I see one.
And man. I was one.
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© 2003-2010, Doug Noto.
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All rights reserved. Do not copy or cite without express permission.
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