My mother and stepfather stopped by for about an hour the other day to see the baby, knowing that because they were going to be out of town for the next ten days Marlo would probably look entirely different when they returned, that’s just how fast newborns change. And because some babies smile as early as four weeks of age, my mother grabbed that baby, laid her right in her lap, and started speaking in a ludicrously high-pitched voice to try and get her to smile. I mean, yes, sometimes babies have that effect on people, make them emit strange noises and coo and cross their eyes, but there in my living room was the Avon World Sales Leader approaching a level of ridiculousness that I can only describe as Elmo on speed.
At one point the pitch of her voice reached an octave so high that Coco starting howling.
And then, after pleading endlessly, “Come on, baby girl, you can do it! You can smile! Smile for me!” my mother paused for maybe a half second to catch her breath when suddenly the sides of Marlo’s mouth turned up almost unnoticeably. Everyone in the room gasped, and my mother raised her fist to pump it in the air only to have Marlo shit her pants so violently that poo started leaking out the sides of her diaper onto my mother’s pants. It was a poop smile. The Avon World Sales Leader elicited a poop smile.
And the first thing my mother said was, “You are not allowed to write about this on your website.” Internet, do you have any idea the kind of pleasure I experienced in writing the last sentence of the previous paragraph?