I've never been a fan of baby talk, not even to babies. When adults incorporate baby talk into their regular everyday conversation it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Baby talk, even when directed at babies, seems to assume the listener is a complete moron. And when you hear a grown woman talking to her grown husband/boyfriend/significant other in baby talk it's just downright creepy. Like women who call their significant others "daddy" and then follow it up with a partially-gibberish request for jewelry. Gross.
(However, although I've never baby-talked to my dog, an ongoing discourse of complete nonsense is not, for some odd reason, an irregular occurrence: "Who's the best dog ever in the whole wide world? Is THEO the best dog ever? Ever in the whole world? Yes she is! Oh yes she is! I'm going to fold the laundry now! Do you want to help fold the laundry? Nooooo Theo can't fold the laundry! Theo doesn't have opposible thumbs! No she doesn't!" etc. As long as I pronounce each word maturely I for some reason consider this acceptable.)
While up until now I've managed to keep baby talk out of my speech completely, even when whispering sweet nothings to romantic interests at the peak of my teenage hormonal years, the somehow inherent necessity of repeating everything to anybody who is not an adult human being has not escaped me. Why do we do this? Is it because we feel the need to immediately fill any possible silence after a silly declaration to indicate we understand the joke is on us? Is it because we think somehow that even though the listener is certain not to understand us the first time, they will somehow gain whatever knowledge is necessary to decipher our meaning a millisecond later?
And now that I have an actual baby I do find myself doing the real baby talk thing, not just the repetition of inane but adult-word commentary - although not to an obnoxious degree (I must tell myself this, so I can live with myself). I've given myself a pass with the minor baby-talk that seems to just slip out - a phenomenon that seems to kick in whether you like it or not as a side-effect of giving birth - but only, obviously, when directed at my baby. Therefore you can imagine my shame and embarrassment when I asked a coworker the other day if her lunch was "lummers in her tummers."
Even I don't know what this means, although like Jabberwocky the context does at least provide a fairly reliable definition to infer. My coworker either didn't notice or has a brilliant baby-talk filter mechanism because she didn't react at all, just answered the nonsense question as if it were perfectly ordinary. But this did not alleviate my mortification. What if I've completely lost all baby-talk self control? What if she reacted so smoothly because I do this ALL THE TIME and don't even realize it?!
For those of you who do not have or interact with kids and, therefore, have no reason to know this, babies have a tough time with pronouns so it is recommended you refer to her and yourself in the third person or by name. But Tom and I now refer to ourselves completely in the third person at home, even when not addressing the baby. "Mamma's going night-night" has replaced "I'm going to bed." We do it when the entire rest of the sentence is completely inappropriate for a baby's ears: "Daddy is so FUCKing exhausted." We may say "fuck" around our kid but at least we remembered to refer to ourselves in the third person.
I think the barriers between home and work are slowly erroding, as evidenced by the lummers question. Now I'm living in a constant state of paranoia. What if in my next staff meeting I burst forth with, "Who wants to hear Mamma's reporty-worty? Who wants to hear? Who wants to hear Mamma's reporty-worty-torty-lorty?" I really feel sometimes like this might not be too far off.
Is Mamma going a little nutsy-wutsy? Is she? Is she? Is Mamma going to have to go away to the hospital wospital? Oh, yes she is! Oh yes she is!
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